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Social sciences
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychopathology
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Medical and health sciences
- Psychotherapy
Since personality is regarded as an underlying dimension of psychopathology, it has led to a great deal of theory development in the field of clinical psychology. From different perspectives two major personality styles are distinguished: an anaclitic, that has the capacity to develop mature, mutually satisfying interpersonal relationships, and an introjective, that has the capacity to develop a consolidated, realistic, essentially positive, differentiated and integrated self-identity. According to the Symptom Specificity Hypothesis (SSH), the anaclitic personality style is specifically linked to (psycho)somatic symptoms, whereas the introjective personality style would be mostly associated with cognitive-mental (obsessive-compulsive) symptoms. However, recent in-depth studies showed the presence of somatic symptoms in the introjective personality style as well, yet little is known about their nature and function. This stands in contrast to somatic symptoms in the anaclitic personality style, which have been well studied. Our study deals with this research gap concerning somatic symptoms in introjective patients by examining the somatic symptoms within the subjective and interpersonal functioning of these patients in comparison to anaclitic patients. To this end, we will combine quantitative and in-depth qualitative analyses, including single case research as well as psycholinguistic methods.