Thematic Apperception Test The Potential Dimensions Of Personality Study

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a difficult subject which was givengreat attention in the field of clinical psychology in the present. Studies of BPD aremore in foreign countries than in China. Researches in foreign countries mainly focuson epidemiology, etiology, diagnosis, assessment and therapy, and defensemechanism, early object relationship and attachment type, while one research inChina has done a deep study of psychological analysis to understand BPD's innerworld. However, seldom researchers apply TAT (thematic apperception test) to dodeep study of BPD'S potential personality traits and to explore the feature of innerneed-press. Moreover, seldom research is on studying the traits of eye movement ofTAT pictures by using eye tracking techniques.The participants of this research are BPD patients who are students in university.The main purpose of research is to deeply analyze the TAT stories of BPD's, in orderto understand their potential personality, to explore their need-pressure system.Moreover, we are interested in how the system of need-pressure will forecastpossibility of BPD, and the relationship between traumatic themes and cure themes ininitial sandplay and need-press system. Finally, we study BPD's eye movement traitsof TAT pictures to understand their feature of unstable and conflict. The meaning ofthis research is helpful to clinical diagnosis and psychotherapy, and also is a practicalintroduction to the work of psychological health in university.The main methods of this research are questionare, projective test sandplayproduction analysis, and eye tracking techniques. Result of this research: (1)sum ofneeds and pressures of BPD are significantly higher than that of normal participants,and sum of pressures of BPD is significantly higher than sum of needs.(2)manynegative needs of BPD is significantly higher than that of normal, while positiveneeds of BPD is lower. And many pressures of BPD are significantly higher than thatof normal.(3) The score of BPD can be forecasted by needs of achievement andemotional change, and also by pressures of active physical danger, associative,emotional and insupport. (4)Traumatic themes are positively related with negativeneeds and pressures, while cure themes have significantly positive relation withachievement need and negative relation with emotional pressure.(5) Average pupil size of BPD across in interest area of face and eyes is bigger than that of normal,average dwell time is shorter, fixation counts are more which indicates the nature ofunstable and conflictive personality of BPD.