Lost in translation? Finding the person in the emerging paradigm of clinical science: introduction to a special issue on personality psychology and psychotherapy.

A quick check of numerous states’ requirements for a license in clinical psychology reveals that graduate courses in “individual differences” or “personality” are still part of the necessary core curriculum for licensure. As the field of clinical psychology continues to develop evidence-based treatment protocols for specific psychological disorders and conditions, one might pause to ask about the continued relevance of personality theory and research to practitioners focused on tailored interventions and time-limited psychotherapy. Do fledgling clinical scientists and practitioners really need to know about personality? My goal in this special issue was to assemble a group of clinical psychologists who conduct personality research in order to provide convincing evidence for how vital personality psychology remains for clinical assessment and psychotherapy. Although coming from divergent theoretical and therapeutic orientations, each of the contributors to this issue illustrates the advantages of linking assessment, diagnosis, and treatment to a research-based understanding of personality processes. Even more, and perhaps most inspiring, their work taken as a whole makes a compelling case for an integrative understanding of the whole person (rather than a set of symptoms) in the course of psychotherapy. Guided by the conceptual organization used in my book Personality and psychotherapy: Treating the whole person (Singer, 2005), I hoped to elicit contributions from 10 prominent clinical/personality psychologists who jointly could represent the three levels of McAdams’s (1995) framework of personality (traits, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity) as well as a fourth level that I have characterized as “relational dynamics. ”To my great pleasure, all but one of these outstanding researchers were available and generated articles that provided summaries of their recent theoretical and empirical work with attention to its application to psychotherapy. Working from the Level 1 or “Trait” perspective, Thomas Widiger and his co-author Jennifer Presnall have contributed a paper on the role that the Five-Factor Model can play in a reconceptualization of personality disorder diagnosis in the upcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Stephen Strack and Theodore Millon also provided a paper that fits in the Level 1 framework, given their reliance on psychometric scales, but clearly the Millon “personological” model extends beyond a trait-based formulation of personality. In fact this same point can be made about Widiger’s integrative perspective on the five factors. (The theme of the blurring of “boundaries” among levels of the McAdams’s framework is one that I will return to in more depth later in this introduction.) Moving on to Level 2, “Characteristic Adaptations,” I hoped to showcase clinical/personality researchers who could demonstrate clinical applications of social cognitive theories of personality, such as Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1998) and the Cognitive Affective Processing System (CAPS; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Timothy Strauman and his co-authors identify characteristic promotion-focused and prevention-focused regulatory styles that are traceable to individuals’ respective vulnerabilities to depression and anxiety. As the authors demonstrate, knowledge of clients’ regulatory tendencies offers valuable guidance in individualized treatment planning and intervention strategies. Yuichi Shoda, in combination with his co-authors, shows how CAPS employs state-of-the-art assessment techniques to yield tailored stress management interventions specific to a given individual in specific circumstances. This approach complements the longterm personality stability of trait measures by identifying more situation-specific patterns, which display greater variability but still reflect an underlying stability within the person. Moving to Level 3, I sought to provide examples of how personality psychology and clinical psychology converge around themes of narrative construction and meaning-making. For insight-oriented therapists who see therapy as an arena for