Detail

Keywords

Personality Disorders; Personality structure; Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalytic Theory; Psychoanalytic Therapy

Research group(s)

• Personality disorder research group
  Head: Victor Blüml
  Research Area: Personality Disorders; Assessment; Psychopathology; Personality Structure; Psychoanalytic perspectives; Transference-Focused Psychotherapie
  Members:
  Victor Blüml

Research interests

My main areas of research interest are twofold. As head of the "Personality Disorder Research Group" I am interested in empirically investigating personality disorders from a psychodynamic perspective. We conduct research on diagnosis and assessment with a focus on personality structure/organization/functioning as well as on evidence-based treatment apporaches, notably Transference-Focused Psychotherapy.

My second area of reasearch focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues of psychoanalysis and developing genuinely psychoanalytic (qualitative) research methods.

Techniques, methods & infrastructure

• Structural Interview for Personality Organisation nach Kernberg (STIPO)
• Examination of Anomalous Self-experience (EASE)
• Qualitative methods: Interviews (e.g. FANI - Free Association Narrative Interview); content analysis; Depth hermeneutics

Grants

• Personality organization in Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Affective Disorder, and Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (2016)
  Source of Funding: Heigl-Stiftung, Forschungsförderung
  Principal Investigator

Selected publications

1. Fuchshuber, J. et al. (2025) ‘Personality Organization, Childhood Adversity, and Paranoid Thinking: Moderating and mediating pathways’, Psychopathology, pp. 1–22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1159/000547518.
2. Waschulin, L. et al. (2025) ‘The role of personality functioning and childhood trauma in patients in opioid substitution treatment’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1584143.
3. Blüml, V. (2025) ‘Wie wirkt Psychoanalyse?’, PSYCHE, 79(3), pp. 187–214. Available at: https://doi.org/10.21706/ps-79-3-187.
4. Gruber, M. et al. (2023) ‘Personality functioning and self-disorders in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis, with first-episode psychosis and with borderline personality disorder’, BJPsych Open, 9(5). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2023.530.
5. Blüml, V. and Doering, S. (2021) ‘ICD-11 Personality Disorders: A Psychodynamic Perspective on Personality Functioning’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.654026.