Perceived emotional invalidation and borderline personality disorder features: a test of theory

Abstract

Contemporary theories of borderline personality disorder (BPD) have detailed the functional importance of emotional invalidation in meaningful relationships as an aetiological and perpetuating factor of its core disturbances. The purpose of our study was to test aspects of Linehan's (1993) biosocial and Fruzzetti (1996) and Fruzzetti, Shenk, and Hoffman's (2005) validation/invalidation family interactions transactional theories in a community sample of 186 participants. Results indicated that a multi-mediational path model of invalidation in meaningful relationships, emotion dysregulation, poor distress tolerance and BPD symptoms provided a perfect fit to the data and accounted for a substantial amount of variance in BPD (38%). The results provided support for these complimentary theories of BPD, which hold promise for clinical applications and future research.