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7 - The Inflexible Self and Lived Time

A Phenomenological Approach to Personality Disorders

from Part II - Contemporary Approaches to Traditional Conceptual Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2025

By
Anna Sterna ,
Marcin Moskalewicz ,
Philipp Schmidt-Boddy  and
Thomas Fuchs
Edited by
Konrad Banicki  and
Peter Zachar
Konrad Banicki
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Peter Zachar
Affiliation:
Auburn University, Montgomery
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Summary

This chapter sheds light on phenomenological aspects of personality disorders. Although research on personality disorders has increased in the last decades, it remains relatively underexamined compared to other mental health conditions. This discrepancy is even more evident in phenomenological psychopathology. To fill this lacuna, this chapter offers an analysis of the implicit, temporal foundation of self-experience in personality disorders. It is argued that personality disorders can be understood in terms of a temporal inflexibility of the self. Important aspects of lived inflexibility are described across five topoi: repetitiveness of interpersonal patterns, affective rigidity, reification of self-experience, lack of future openness, and the feeling of being stuck.

Keywords

temporalityphenomenologyphenomenological psychopathologylived timeaffectivitypersonality disordersselfinterpersonal functioning
Type
Chapter
Information
Conceptualizing Personality Disorder
Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychological Science, and Psychiatry
 , pp. 130 - 146
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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