Examining the Utility of Life Narratives for the Assessment of Personality Pathology in Emerging Adults

Recent advances in psychiatric nosology adopt a dimensional conceptualization for personality pathology. This framework includes the assessment of an individual’s level of personality functioning (LPF), constituting core features of personality pathology across self- and interpersonal domains. Given the increased emphasis on the assessment of self-functioning (e.g., identity, self-direction), scholars have proposed that narrative methods might be useful for the assessment of one’s sense of self, and thus, improve the detection of personality pathology. The narrative identity framework offers a phenomenologically rich account of the self as a story, holding the potential to capture aspects of the self not currently assessed with existing measures of self and identity. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the utility of narrative identity for the assessment of LPF. Through this, we examined the associations between narrative identity and LPF, and the prediction of both a self-report measure and clinical interview of LPF by narrative variables. Finally, we used hierarchical regression to evaluate the incremental utility of narrative identity over LPF in predicting functional impairment. Data was collected from 90 participants between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 20.09, SD = 1.71) drawn from a mixed college and clinical sample. Results revealed more maladaptive LPF was significantly associated with lower levels of agency, communion, and growth, but higher narrative deterioration. Regression analyses revealed narrative agency emerged as the sole significant predictor of LPF as measured via self-report. Results demonstrated that agency explained small incremental variance above the clinical interview for LPF (though not the self-report measure) in predicting functional impairment. In sum, findings suggest that narrative identity is indeed associated with LPF, and narrative agency in particular may benefit the assessment of LPF.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology, Clinical

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Balzen, Kennedy Michelle 1998-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sharp, Carla

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Derrick, Jaye
• Babcock, Julia
• Lind, Majse

• Psychology
• Clinical psychology

Language dc:language.iso

English

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/19840

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/19840