title: Beyond traits: personality as intersubjective themes.
abstract: The author argues that research in the idiographic tradition is more conducive to effective clinical work than the uncritical adoption of specific "evidence-based therapies" for discrete symptomatic disorders. She views pressures on therapists to adopt evidence-based therapies without consideration of individual differences and personal subjectivity as the misapplication of a research paradigm to the clinical situation. Reviewing some recent empirical work on individuality and therapeutic process, she critiques efforts to formulate personality diagnosis on the basis of externally observable traits without attention to internal experience, and she contends that intrapsychic themes account for personality differences more powerfully than traits, even when traits are construed dimensionally.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA. nancymcw@aol.com
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: McWilliams
mesh_terms: D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D002605:Character; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D055317:Evidence-Based Practice / Q000639:trends; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends