Mechanisms of Change in Treatments of Personality Disorders: Commentary on the Special Section

Ueli Kramer has assembled an eclectic and original set of articles on mechanisms of change in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. They largely focus on patient variables. Several authors make the point that developmentally based variables may have more predictive power than symptom-based variables. Several other articles illustrate that changes occur early in treatments and studying their mechanisms is a promising approach that could have longer term significance. These articles document the variety of research methodologies that can be used to study mechanisms of change and the potential clinical significance of doing this. For showing the field the potential of such research, we owe Dr. Kramer our gratitude.