SELF-ORIENTED EMPATHY AND PERSONALITY ORGANISATION LEVEL: INSIGHTS FROM A PSYCHIATRIC SAMPLE

Empathy functioning is among the criteria to delineate psychiatric diagnosis. However, the self-oriented empathy dimension is almost neglected in the existing literature. On the basis of previous fragmented contributions, we hypothesised that an individual's level of personality organisation is explained by this facet of empathy more than the other components of empathy, both transversally and independently from the specific psychiatric diagnosis.Fifty-nine psychiatric inpatients were evaluated with clinical interviews inspired by the Structured Clinical Interview forThe first series of models revealed self-oriented empathy (IRI personal distress subscale) as the best empathic dimension to explain levels of personality organisation. The second series revealed that none of the four IRI subscales explained psychiatric diagnoses.The consistency of our findings with evolutionary concepts pertaining to both traditional psychodynamic models and contemporary models of psychopathology, such as the