Personality Functioning Cannot Only Be One Thing: A Call for Theoretical Pluralism

Since its origins in recent diagnostic perspectives, the concept of personality functioning has been exclusively defined as a general factor of personality (pathology). Researchers have justified this definition by appealing to descriptive empirical findings (e.g., positive correlations among various personality disorder indicators) or traditional psychoanalytic theories (e.g., ego psychology). In this review, I argue that this monopoly of interpretive viewpoints is currently impeding progress in the field of personality functioning. To begin with, I review seminal psychoanalytic theories and show how all of them run contrary to the view of personality functioning as a 'single, underlying capacity'. Subsequently, I review the empirical literature on personality functioning and argue that this construct could be interpreted in either a descriptive way (in which case it is theoretically empty) or an explanatory way (in which case it is fundamentally incompatible with the kinds of psychoanalytic theories typically invoked to justify it). Finally, I present three alternative ways of conceptualising personality functioning (viz., a configurational way, a dialectic way and a relational way) and conclude the paper by suggesting that the future of this line of inquiry lies in formally articulating and empirically scrutinising as many such competing theoretical viewpoints as possible.