Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy for Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder

In Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy for Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder, Dr. Lorna Smith Benjamin shows her approach to working with clients who exhibit this disorder. Interpersonal reconstructive therapy assumes that maladaptive personality patterns such as passive-aggressive behavior are a repetition of behavior that was once appropriate to the client within the context of his or her childhood family experiences. Therapy involves recognizing these repeated patterns and understanding where they come from and why they continue.

In this session, Dr. Benjamin works with a 53-year-old man who has a history of chronic pain and unstable employment. She works with him to help him come to an awareness of the recurring relationships in his life and to see the sources of these patterns in his past.

This video features a client portrayed by an actor on the basis of actual case material. However, unlike the actor, who remained in the role, actual patients are more responsive to the interventions and begin to collaborate and work on change.