Empathy, Mentalization, and Theory of Mind in Borderline Personality Disorder: Possible Overlap With Autism Spectrum Disorders

摘要

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by persistent deficits in social communicationand interaction, behavior patterns, and narrow and repetitive interests or activities. Individualswith an ASD diagnosis have an atypical social approach to conversation reciprocity and areduced sharing of interests, emotions, or feelings. Their verbal and non-verbal communication ispoorly integrated, anomalies in eye contact and body language are present, as well as difficultiesin understanding and using gestures (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Over time thehypothesis has been confirmed that at the basis of the social compromises characterizing autismthere are impairments in theory of mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to peoplein order to explain and predict their behavior (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Baron-Cohen, 1995).Some studies have related ASD to personality disorders, as shown by recent reviews of theliterature, highlighting that there is a percentage of comorbidity between the autistic spectrum andpsychopathological traits (Matson and Nebel-Schwalm, 2007; Matson and Goldin, 2013; Mannionet al., 2014). In relation to the analyses found in the literature, the disorder that in our opinionshows particular possible overlaps with ASD in terms of lack of empathy and theory of mind seemsto be BPD.