Episode Guide
Here's an episode-by-episode guide, so you can read more about each episode in depth and search by keyword.
Please note: transcripts and summaries are AI generated.
Episode 005 - What is a Personality Disorder, Anyway?
In this episode, we take a deeper look at personality disorders by comparing the DSM-5-TR framework with the interpersonal perspective of Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT). Rather than viewing PDs as fixed or stigmatizing labels, we explore how IRT conceptualizes them as learned relational patterns shaped by developmental environments, attachment histories, and trauma.
We discuss how clinicians can use their own emotional responses in the therapy room as meaningful data, the importance of understanding a client’s relationship with both others and themselves, and why compassionately mapping learning histories leads to more effective treatment. We also touch on Lorna Benjamin’s “song” metaphor, the role of red and green systems, and what it means to help clients reclaim or reconstruct a more authentic sense of self.
This episode aims to support clinicians in approaching personality-related work with clarity, curiosity, and respect for the complexity of human development.
🎙️ Episode Overview:
Episode 5 explores the meaning and usefulness of the term “personality disorder,” contrasting traditional diagnostic perspectives with the interpersonal and developmental lens of Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT). Ken and Eliza discuss how personality is inherently relational—shaped by early attachments and sustained through habitual patterns of relating to self and others. They guide listeners through both the DSM-5-TR’s definition and IRT’s more nuanced approach, emphasizing curiosity and empathy over labeling and judgment.
🧩 Major Themes and Discussion Points:
The DSM Definition and Its Limits
Ken reads the DSM-5-TR criteria for personality disorders—enduring, inflexible patterns of thinking, feeling, and relating that cause distress or impairment. Eliza notes how broad and impersonal these categories can feel, often obscuring the relational nature of personality. The DSM lists traits, but IRT asks what relationships taught these traits and what purposes they serve.
Reframing “Disorder” as Learned Relational Pattern
IRT, rooted in Lorna Smith Benjamin’s SASB model, interprets each so-called disorder as a learned configuration of behaviors, emotions, and expectations in relationships. Rather than “broken personalities,” clients express enduring attachment strategies—ways of staying safe or loyal to early caregivers.
Moving from Labels to Compassion
We discuss how diagnostic terms such as narcissistic, avoidant, or borderline often carry stigma, even among clinicians. IRT replaces judgment with curiosity: these patterns are behavioral footprints of love and survival, not moral failings.
Using the Therapeutic Relationship as Data
Eliza describes how a therapist’s emotional responses to clients (e.g., feeling distant, anxious, or frustrated) become tools for understanding the client’s interpersonal world. This “use of self” helps therapists sense the relational pull of the client’s patterns in vivo.
Personality Patterns in SASB Terms
Lorna Benjamin’s 1993 work mapped DSM categories onto SASB dimensions—offering specific, researchable hypotheses about how interpersonal behaviors (e.g., control vs. submission, closeness vs. distance) reflect early learning histories. This transforms static labels into dynamic relational maps that can guide empathy and treatment planning.
Clinician Self-Awareness and Complementarity
Ken and Eliza illustrate how client patterns “pull” for complementary responses. For instance, an avoidant stance invites distance from the therapist—yet therapeutic progress requires leaning in gently instead. Recognizing these pulls helps prevent reenactments of clients’ old attachment patterns.
Toward a Compassionate, Functional View
Personality, in IRT terms, includes how people relate both to others and to themselves. Problematic patterns are functional but outdated—they once kept the person safe. Understanding their origin allows both therapist and client to approach change without shame.
📚 Key Takeaways:
• Personality disorders reflect relational learning, not intrinsic defects.
• The DSM provides descriptive labels; IRT provides relational explanations.
• Therapists’ emotional responses can be diagnostic tools for understanding interpersonal patterns.
• SASB translates categorical diagnoses into measurable relational positions.
• Compassion, not labeling, fosters understanding and growth.
Episode 004 - Introduction to SASB, part 2 - Touring the SASB model
Building on the previous episode, Ken and Eliza dive deeper into how SASB is applied in therapy. They explore the “copy process,” complementarity, and the use of alternative responses to help shift rigid, repetitive patterns toward flexibility and health. Through examples and reflection, they show how SASB helps reveal the logic of clients’ loyalties and self-treatment, bringing IRT’s core theme—learning to love differently—into concrete, behavioral focus.
🎙️ Episode Overview:
In this follow-up episode, Ken and Eliza expand on SASB’s clinical uses—how the model helps therapists decode interpersonal dynamics, understand self-treatment, and identify where clients are “stuck.” They explore how SASB integrates with IRT’s focus on love, loyalty, and change.
🧩 Major Themes and Discussion Points:
From Description to Application
SASB is more than a taxonomy—it’s a practical guide for recognizing repeating relational patterns. By plotting interactions on the model, therapists can see how behaviors mirror (“copy”) early relationship templates.The Copy Process
Central to both IRT and SASB, the “copy process” describes how people recreate patterns from early attachments in current relationships and in self-treatment.
Identification: Treating others as one was treated.
Introjection: Treating oneself as one was treated.
Recapitulation: Being in the same position as in past relationships
These processes describe and help explain why people repeat painful dynamics even when they wish to change.
Mapping the Inner World
The “introject” surface of SASB represents how individuals treat themselves—whether they are self-loving and self-accepting or self-attacking and self-punitive. Recognizing these patterns helps link external relationships to internal dialogue.Complementarity and Antithesis
Complementarity describes how interpersonal patterns pull for matching behaviors (e.g., control elicits submission). Therapists use “antithesis” or “antidote” responses—unexpected, healthy reactions -- technically the opposite of the complementary position —to disrupt these cycles and model new ways of relating.Rigidity, Context, and Health
The goal is in part to engage in more affiliative and reciprocal ways, and also to increase flexibility and context sensitivity. SASB helps identify when patterns are hostile, extreme, rigid, repetitive, or context-inappropriate—markers of maladaptation.Integration with IRT Formulation
Ken and Eliza connect SASB back to IRT’s conceptual frame: red (regressively loyal, maladaptive) and green (collaborative, reality-based, growth-oriented) modes. SASB provides the behavioral precision to describe those modes in action—showing where “red” and “green” patterns each play out in daily life.
💡 Key Takeaways:
SASB operationalizes the interpersonal logic of IRT.
The copy process is a language to capture how early attachment experiences repeat in adulthood.
Change involves recognizing old patterns and practicing new, antithetical responses.
Health involves a baseline of friendliness, coupled with behavioral flexibility that attends to context.
📚 Next Episode:
Ken and Eliza preview a deeper dive into SASB’s applications in therapy—how to identify patterns, interpret the “copy process,” and understand the logic behind rigid interpersonal cycles.
⏰ Timestamps/Notes:
(2:35) Overview of the positions of SASB, starting with cluster 2 (“I’m ok and you’re ok”)
(5:09) Cluster 3 - love
(8:39) Cluster 4 - protect/teach
(13:08) Cluster 5 - control
(19:17) Cluster 6 - blame
(30:29) Cluster 7 - attack
(38:59) Cluster 8 - ignore
(47:14) Cluster 1 - emancipate
📓 References:
Benjamin, L. S. (2018). Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy for Anger, Anxiety and Depression: It’s about broken hearts, not broken brains. American Psychological Association (APA).
Critchfield, K. L., & Benjamin, L. S. (2024). Structural analysis of social behavior: A primer for clinical use. American Psychological Association (APA).
Episode 003 - Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), part 1
In this episode, Dr. Ken Critchfield and Dr. Eliza Stucker-Rozovsky introduce the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), the core model that maps how people relate to others and to themselves. They explain SASB’s three dimensions—Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence—and show how it provides a clear framework for understanding complex interpersonal patterns. This foundational discussion sets the stage for how SASB connects to Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT) and the “red” and “green” ways of loving differently.
🎙️ Episode Overview:
This episode introduces Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB)—the core descriptive system underlying Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy (IRT). Dr. Ken Critchfield and Dr. Eliza Stucker-Rozovsky explain how SASB maps human behavior and inner experience across three dimensions, showing how interpersonal patterns shape both our relationships and our self-treatment.
🧩 Major Themes and Discussion Points:
What SASB Is
SASB is a systematic model for describing interpersonal behavior—how people treat others and themselves. It is a three-dimensional coordinate system that helps clinicians and researchers capture the complexity of human interaction without reducing it to vague intuition.Three Dimensions of SASB
Focus: Determines who the behavior is about—focus on other, self, or self-in-relation-to-self (the “introject”).
Affiliation: Ranges from love to hate, describing the warmth or hostility of the action.
Interdependence: Ranges from interdependence (enmeshment, co-coordination: control, submission) to independence (differentiation: freedom, separation, granting or taking autonomy).
Together, these axes create a “map” of interpersonal behavior—allowing therapists to locate any interaction in a consistent conceptual space.
Why It Matters
SASB helps therapists go beyond intuition by identifying patterns objectively. It reduces bias by focusing on observable behaviors rather than personal impressions or cultural connotations of words like “control,” “trust,” or “care.”Language and Cultural Nuance
Ken and Eliza discuss how language can mislead us—terms like “self-care” or “control” can mean different things to different people. SASB clarifies these by tying them to specific, observable behaviors.Rigidity vs. Flexibility
Healthy functioning involves behavioral flexibility—being able to move fluidly within the SASB model based on context, especially when the baseline includes friendliness. In addition to hostility or extremes of interdependence, pathology often reflects rigidity: patterns that repeat regardless of situation, including when they are problematic.Complementarity and Patterns
People naturally elicit complementary behaviors in others (e.g., control invites submission, and vice versa). Recognizing these dynamics helps therapists understand stuck relational loops and guide clients toward more adaptive positions.
💡 Key Takeaways:
SASB provides a structured, three-dimensional way to describe interpersonal and intrapsychic behavior.
Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence map the range of human relating in terms of “who, how warm, and how connected”.
Flexibility, not friendliness alone, marks healthy adaptation.
Understanding SASB deepens case formulation in IRT by linking present behavior to early learning and attachment patterns.
📚 Next Episode:
Ken and Eliza preview a deeper dive into SASB’s applications in therapy—how to identify patterns, interpret the “copy process,” and understand the logic behind rigid interpersonal cycles.
⏰ Timestamps/Notes:
3 axes of SASB: Focus, Affiliation, and Interdependence
(08:52) - Axes of SASB
Axis 1 - Focus: Is this about you, or is this about me?
(10:00) - Focus on other
(10:35) - Focus on self relative to other
(11:35) - Focus on self
Axis 2 - Affiliation: Are we in friendly space, or are we in hostile space? Axis 3 - Interdependence: Do we go our separate ways or do we share?
(12:56) - Describing SASB visually, with axes of affiliation (13:00) and interdependence (19:17)
(26:52) - Goals of IRT using SASB - flexibility
(30:40) - The “dances” within SASB
-Principles of similarity, opposites, and complementarity
(38:15) - Baseline of healthy relatedness
📓 References:
Critchfield, K. L., & Benjamin, L. S. (2024). Structural analysis of social behavior: A primer for clinical use. American Psychological Association (APA).