There is general agreement that the categorical approach to personality disorders is flawed, and many propose that the Five Factor Model (FFM) provides a sound alternative dimensional model of normal personality that can be applied to helping understand personality pathology. There are, however, logical concerns as to whether trait-based approaches can provide a coherent theoretical framework for comprehending personality pathology. This chapter evaluates the theoretical soundness of the FFM trait approach as a basis for comprehending personality pathology. The chapter first examines the conceptual standing of traits in relation to the generally under-appreciated conceptual distinction between nonrelational properties and relations. The theoretical problems of reification and circular explanation are then used to demonstrate that although traits might help discern individual differences within the population, they are logically precluded from explaining personality pathology. An alternative theoretical approach for understanding personality is proposed based on integrating motivational, cognitive, and affective processes and recognizing the importance of philosophical enquiry for identifying logical commitments that any theory of personality must satisfy. This chapter further highlights the necessity for rigorous theoretical research in scientific psychology to effectively address personality pathology.

The chapter’s first section develops the book’s underlying argument that the moral psychology of violation involves synthesising metaphysical expression and its metapsychological grounds. Its second section engages with Martha Nussbaum’s argument in Anger and Forgiveness (2016) that we should understand guilt and forgiveness without reference to metapsychology, and only in terms of unconditional love leading to eudaimonic social ‘Transition’. Against this, I argue that guilt and forgiveness remain morally important and we see this in the parable of the prodigal son. Where Nussbaum argues that the father’s unconditional love sets aside questions of forgiveness, I suggest that such moral questions between a father and son remain at stake. A third section offers a ‘case study’ of guilt and forgiveness in the dialogue between Jo Berry, whose father died in the IRA Brighton bombing of 1984, and Patrick Magee, one of the bombers. This shows how difficult moral dialogues around blame, guilt and forgiveness are central to reconciliation, though this may be blocked by surrounding unresolved social and political questions. Overall, connecting metaphysics and metapsychology enables us to see why moral transactions (distinguished from legal ones) and social transitions are both necessary for reconciliation.

Returning to Part II of the book, this chapter revisits the underlying metapsychology of victimhood. Exploring Freud’s account of mourning and melancholia, it considers the psychological need to mourn and the danger of melancholia. Mourning involves absorbing the loss of a loved identification and the need thereafter to return to an evolved sense of wholeness. This links it metapsychologically to guilt and the need to be at one again after violation. Melancholia is a way of internalising an external trauma and judging from it that one lacks worth. The case study is Patricio Guzmán’s film Nostalgia for the Light (2010) on the aftermath of Chile’s dictatorship (1973–90). The film focuses on women who search the Atacama Desert for remains of murdered family members or reflect on the loss of ‘disappeared’ parents. In a film that is the director’s own act of mourning, the women insist on their right to mourn and reject the state’s melancholia-inducing implication that their loss does not matter. The film’s metaphysical and aesthetic beauty places it on the victims’ side. ‘Nostalgia’ in its title reflects loving memory of the past as a means of anchoring engagement in the present rather than escaping it.