Personality disorders from a phenomenological perspective

Different studies have questioned the capacity of the categorical diagnostics to establish a clear distinction between the existence or not of a determined personality disorder. The dimensional perspective would approach more to reality, in the measure that it tries to measure the different intensity degrees in which these disorders are present in the patients. But its application is very laborious and besides, presupposes that those categories whose nuances it pretends to measure really exist. The foresaid leads us to appeal to phenomenological perspective, which seems to be more adequate for the study of complex realities, as it is the case of the personality and its disorders. The essential features of the phenomenological method in the sense of Husserl are described, as well as his contribution to the study of personality disorders. This can be summarized in three fundamental points: the ideal types, introduced in psychiatry by Karl Jaspers, the existential types, by Ludwig Binswanger, and the dialectic typologies and polarities, by Wolfgang Blankenburg and the undersigned. This author defines and develops each one of these concepts, aiming to show their advantages with respect to the categorical and dimensional systems.