Applying principles of intercultural communication to personality disorder therapy.

Psychotherapy with patients who were diagnosed with a personality disorder bears a strong resemblance to intercultural communication. I suggest conceptualizing the situation of a patient with a personality disorder as being similar to that of an overseas traveller. Like the traveller, the patient faces the task of getting along in a social environment that does not share many of his or her ingrained values regarding 'appropriate' interpersonal behaviour. In order to reduce the potential for misunderstandings and interpersonal problems, the patient would benefit from (a) learning about the culturally accepted rules of interacting and (b) partly adopting those rules. Borrowing from training manuals for intercultural communication, I suggest a number of therapeutic principles that specifically address the discrepancies between the patient's habits and internalized values, and the cultural conventions that govern the social environment in which the patient lives.