The Riggs Difference: Where Understanding Leads to Recovery
John Rucker, PsyD, and Mark Ruffalo, MSW, DPsa, authored the piece "Relationships Between Language Use, Working Alliance, and Personality Pathology in an Inpatient Psychiatric Sample" in the Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy.
(from the publisher)
"Language is an illuminating representation of psychological processes. By identifying language use early in treatment, as well as the relationship between language and psychological phenomenon, care providers can more effectively attune and brace for clinical situations pertaining to the working alliance with patients, particularly in inpatient settings where these alliances are vital and dynamic. The aim of this study was to explore connections between language use elicited by a sentence completion test administered near hospital admission, working alliance, and personality pathology in a sample of adult psychiatric inpatients. First, several statistically significant associations emerged between early language use and initial/final working alliance scores. Second, a classification of personality disorder differentiated linguistic expressions consistent with theoretical perspectives of personality pathology. For example, inpatients who met criteria for at least one personality disorder used vocabulary suggestive of poor mentalizing and/or double bind communications. Lastly, a regression model indicated select language tools predicted personality disorder symptoms. Clinical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed."
DOI: 10.1007/s10879-025-09694-6