Lorna Smith Benjamin

Introduction to the special section on structural analysis of social behavior.

The structural analysis of social behavior (SASB) model dissects interpersonal and intrapsychic events into 3 underlying dimensions: (a) focus (on other, on self with other, and on self with self): (b) affiliation (love vs. hate); and (c), interdependence (enmeshment or dominance-submission vs. differentiation or emancipate-separate). Accompanied by predictive principles (similarity, opposition, complementarity, introjection, antithesis), the model can operationalize important aspects of a wide range of psychological events. Questionnaires, coding systems, and software permit the SASB model to be applied in a wide array of clinical and research contexts. It has been used by people of divergent theoretical persuasions including the interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral, client-centered, psychoanalytic, expressive, family, and group approaches. In this article, the model and its predictive principles are reviewed, along with examples of research, clinical, and theoretical applications. The articles in this section provided examples of especially creative and appropriate uses.

Social perceptions and borderline personality disorder: the relation to mood disorders.

We used the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) to compare the social perceptions of borderline, unipolar, and bipolar-depressed inpatients. As predicted, borderline subjects differed from bipolar-depressed and unipolar subjects in their social perceptions. Borderline subjects viewed their relationships to their mother, hospital staff, and other patients as more hostile and autonomous than did mood disordered subjects. The results are discussed in terms of an integrative theory of borderline personality that considers the psychobiology of interpersonal relationships and attachment disruptions.

Every Psychopathology is a Gift of Love

In seeking to outline what happens in reconstructive as contrasted to palliative psychotherapy, three major points are made. First, purely empirical study of psychotherapy leads to a Hall of Mirrors—that is, to endless lists of variables and their interactions. Research and clinical practice must be organized by testable theory. Second, a viable, generic theory would hold that most therapies involve learning about interpersonal, affective and cognitive patterns, where they came from and what they are for. If the patient decides to change the underlying agendas that have organized the problem patterns, he or she becomes open to learning new patterns. The problem of will needs intensive study. And third, therapy learning occurs in stages, and outcome measures should be able to recognize progression through stages.

Perceptions of spouse dominance predict blood pressure reactivity during marital interactions

Cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) has been identified as a potential mechanism linking a variety of psychosocial processes to the development of cardiovascular disease. Although the effects of hostile and supportive social stimuli on CVR have been studied extensively, less in known about the effects of a second major dimension of social relations—dominance versus submissiveness. In the present study, 45 married couples participated in an interaction task involving the assertion of differing opinions. Subjects also provided ratings of their typical level of dominance versus submissiveness in relation to their spouse. Consistent with predictions derived from related conceptual models of psychological determinants of CVR, blood pressure reactivity was positively associated with perceptions of the spouse as dominant. At the highest level of perceived spouse dominance, CVR was attenuated, again consistent with prediction. Results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of conceptual models of interpersonal relations and motivation as guides in studying the social determinants of CVR, as well as the value of marital interactions as a context for understanding CVR.

Internalized Representations of Early Interpersonal Experience and Adult Relationships: A Test of Copy Process Theory in Clinical and Non-Clinical Settings

Abstract Studies connecting childhood experience and adult psychopathology often focus on consequences of abuse and neglect. Copy process theory (Benjamin, 2003) states that constructive as well as destructive experiences shape adult behavior with surprising interpersonal specificity. Childhood perceptions and social learning are encoded in memory and then “copied” in 3 basic ways in subsequent relationships: Identification (behaving as he or she behaved), Recapitulation (behaving as one behaved when with him or her), and Introjection (treating oneself as he or she was treated). The first step in evaluating copy process theory is to verify that the predicted correspondence between adult relational patterns and internal representation of early experience can be observed in different adult samples. Remembered interpersonal patterns from childhood and perceptions of adult relational patterns were measured using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB). Strong evidence was found for each copy process in a sample of psychiatric inpatients (N = 161) and a college sample (N = 133). Positive and negative behaviors were copied in both. Evidence suggests that gender, patient status, and rated state may influence whether, and in which forms, copying occurs.

The functional impairment associated with personality disorders.

Personality disorder affects functioning and increases distress in nearly every realm of concern to healthcare providers. In the past year, studies of personality disorder particularly targeted the following areas related to function: co-morbidity with axis I disorders; social functioning across a range of relationships; occupational and cognitive functioning; medical utilization; prevalence and complications of personality disorders in primary care patients; violence/suicide prediction and risk; poor treatment response; substance abuse; and the costs associated with personality disorders. Personality disorders are themselves difficult to treat, and because they complicate the response to the treatment of other disorders, it is becoming ever more apparent that there is an urgent need for effective treatments for personality disorder. Studies vary greatly in the methods chosen for assessing personality disorder. This necessarily means that the reliability and validity of the conclusions are uneven. Nonetheless, we believe that overall, it is ever more apparent that there is an urgent need for effective treatments for personality disorder. Moreover, the assessment and treatment of personality pathology may be important, even in contexts in which it is not the presenting complaint.

A special Latin square for the use of each subject "as his own control".

When the purpose of the experiment is to compare treatments, the Sequences × Positions Latin Square has been employed to control unwanted effects attributable to individuals, position, and sequence. This particular Latin Square has been subjected to criticism on the grounds there is confounding due to structure, random variables, and subject interactions. Special Latin Square, a subclass of the Sequences × Positions Latin Square, is basically ap ×p factorial design in blocks of sizep. The two factors are treatments (T) and positions (P). Sequence is one component of theTP interaction, and square uniqueness is the sum of the remaining components. This completely replicated factorial design has no structural or random variable confounding; if subject interactions are present, square uniqueness may be used as the error term and the bias in the test of treatments will be conservative.

Assessment of Repeated Relational Patterns for Individual Cases Using the SASB-Based Intrex Questionnaire

Repeated interpersonal patterns are central to case conceptualization and treatment planning in interpersonal and attachment-based approaches to therapy. In this study, raters (133 college students, 165 inpatients) provided data on the Intrex questionnaire (Benjamin, 2000) about self-treatment, relationship with a significant other, and remembered interactions with parents in childhood. Within-subject profiles were inspected for precise behavioral matches conforming to 3 “copy process” (CP) patterns: identification (behaving like an important other), recapitulation (behaving as if the other person is still present and in charge), and introjection (treating the self the way another did). We observed CP evidence in most individual ratings. Consistent with expectation, nonclinical raters tended to copy a securely attached pattern of affiliation, low hostility, and moderate degrees of enmeshment and differentiation. Only patients copied maladaptive behavior at greater than base rate expectation. We discuss implications and provide recommendations for use of Intrex in individual assessment of CP.

Sibling interactions, self-regulation, and cynical hostility in adult male twins.

Chronic hostility is associated with increased vulnerability to serious physical illness, making developmental influences on this trait important. We used the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) model to examine retrospective descriptions of twin interactions during childhood in a sample of 48 adult male twin pairs. Consistent with previous research on parental behavior correlates, self-reported hostility as measured by the Cook and Medley Ho scale was associated with descriptions of the twins behavior as hostile, controlling, and neglecting. Consistent with the SASB principle of introjection, hostility was also associated with self directed hostility and neglect. Thus, a developmental perspective not only describes possible social contexts involved in the emergence of this trait, but also suggests possible psychological underpinnings. Implications for models of hostility and health are discussed.

What Is Functional About Functional Autonomy

Recieved March 31, 2008; Revised May 4, 2008. Editor’s Note: This is an expanded version of the award presentation given at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for Personality Assessment. Articles based on award addresses are not sent for peer review, as they reflect the recipient’s perspective on their work and the field. Address correspondence to Lorna S. Benjamin, University of Utah, Department of Psychology, Salt Lake City, UT 84112; Email: LSB 3@msn.com Since the early years of my career, I have admired and been influenced by many of your prior awardees. I’d like to say just a few words about those I think have most directly affected me and my work: Murray’s interest in making relatively objective but nonetheless in-depth assessments of individuals still makes enormous sense to me. I was trained to use the Rorschach using Klopfer’s book (1954) on projective techniques and have remained impressed by the presence and power of the unconscious and the fact that its influence can be seen in cognitive and affective styles that are manifest, among other things, in relation to ambiguous stimuli. Sid Blatt has always been and remains an inspiration for me because of his ability to translate his clinical skills into meaningful, “dynamically oriented” research. Ted Millon has dazzled us all with his ability to “speak in final draft,” which has resulted in prodigious output. Many assessment practitioners have made their living using Ted’s instruments. For my part, I would like to thank him again now for the fact that he has been a consistent and profoundly helpful supporter of my work. And then there is Jerry Wiggins, who made Tim Leary’s interpersonal circle “perfect.” By that, I mean Jerry selected words to include in his Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS–R; Wiggins, Trapnell, & Phillips, 1988) that yielded a psychometrically sound, perfectly round circle when reconstructed by principal components factor analysis followed by Varimax rotation. The IAS–R checklist is widely used and relates in sensible and reliable ways to the NEO–5 (Costa & McCrae; 1990), which in turn has been described as a universal descriptor of personality. Indeed, NEO-5 factors have been replicated in many different cultures, and they do correlate with many variables of interest. There is an ascendant belief that the NEO-5 may come to the rescue in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–V); descriptions of personality and serve as the basis of Axis II diagnoses in the next diagnostic system. One of my earliest versions of the circumplex, the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB; Benjamin, 1974 ), actually started with Earl Schaefer’s (1965) model for parenting behavior, but it also incorporates some of Leary’s ideas and diverges from the Leary and the Schaefer models in important ways. The differences have, I believe, enhanced SASB’s performance in studies of connections between personality and pathology and in tests of predictive principles. The main concepts from my work are (a) SASB, which describes quintessence of interactional patterns and connections among them; (b) interpersonal reconstructive therapy (IRT),