What do practitioners consider the most helpful personality taxa in understanding their patients?

Background: The purpose of this study is to compare these results from the small sample of 61 expert psychodiagnosticians who rated the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual’s taxonomy with a much larger separate sample of typical mental health practitioners of varied theoretical orientations, training and experience. Sampling and Method: A sample of mental health practitioners from a wide range of educational backgrounds and theoretical orientations (N= 438) were asked to diagnose a recently seen patient and then rate the usefulness of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual’s taxonomy. Results: Our survey indicated that the percent rated as “helpful – very helpful” in understanding their patient for each diagnostic taxon were: Level of Personality Organization 75%, Personality Disorders 62%, Mental Functioning 67%, and Cultural/Contextual Dimension 41%. Only 30.5% rated Symptoms as “helpful-very helpful” in understanding their patient. All differences were statistically significant. Conclusions: These results suggest that our findings with expert practitioners are likely to be generalizable to most practitioners, i.e. that a useful taxonomy should include: Personality Organization (healthy, neurotic, borderline, psychotic), Personality Patterns and Disorders (ex: Schizoid, Histrionic, Narcissistic, etc.), and Mental Functioning (ex: Capacity for Intimacy, Defensive Level, Self Observing Capacity, etc.) in addition to a list of symptoms