The DSM’s Reconnection to Psychoanalytic Theory through the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders

Often believed to have Kraepelinian origins, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—5th Edition (DSM-5) defines personality disorders using a categorical, hierarchical taxonomic system. This system possesses many long-standing problems for clinical practice, including a large assortment of symptom combinations that contribute to problematic heterogeneity and likely impair diagnostic validity. The DSM diagnostic system was at one time heavily influenced by psychoanalytic theory (Shorter 2005). A desire for greater theoretical neutrality then encouraged a shift away from psychoanalytic theory, resulting in the problematic atheoretical model of personality pathology introduced in DSM-III (1980) and still used today. The Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD), introduced in DSM-5 (2013), is an attempt to reconcile many of the categorical model’s issues and directly parallels primary themes that characterize psychoanalytic models of personality. After a review of the historical development of DSM, three current systems for diagnosing personality pathology—the DSM-5’s categorical model (2013), its AMPD (2013), and the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2nd ed.; Alliance of Psychoanalytic Organizations 2017) are compared. The comparison illustrates how the AMPD brings psychoanalytic theory back into the DSM system and acknowledges the implications of a more psychoanalytic DSM.