Essays

Essays on personality, diagnosis, and the inner life.

Long-form essays on personality, identity, diagnosis, interpersonal theory, psychodynamics, measurement, and the gap between what psychological models describe and what people actually live.

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Diagnosis & identity · 12 min read

The Name That Holds You Together Might Also Hold You Back

Borderline personality disorder, dimensional psychiatry, and the cost of finally having an answer.

What happens when a diagnosis provides coherence, community, and explanation—but also becomes the structure around which a fragile identity is organized?

Archive

Essays on the models we build—and the lives they try to describe.

08 essays

Measurement · 9 min read

The Convergence Problem

What happens when the map of psychopathology changes depending on who is holding it.

Diagnosis · 14 min read

Designing DSM-6: Lessons from the PDM-3

Seven working solutions to psychiatry’s core diagnostic challenges.

Personality functioning · 11 min read

The Construct Behind Criterion A

Why the field keeps confusing a developmental construct with its measurement tools.

Lived experience · 13 min read

When the Diagnosis Becomes the Self

How years in the mental health system reshape identity in borderline personality disorder.

Psychopathology · 10 min read

A Better Map Isn’t the Territory

Reorganizing psychiatric description will not, by itself, explain the mechanisms underneath it.

Interpersonal theory · 12 min read

Where Interpersonal Theory Meets the Inner World

Using CIIT to guide evidence-based psychodynamic work with borderline patients.

Psychodynamics · 8 min read

Psychodynamic Theory Isn’t the Problem. Measurement Is.

Why psychodynamic ideas need better operationalization, not abandonment.