IJSP Number 2, 2020

59 attractive and provocative, always trying to get other people’s attention. In terms of affect, they express their emotions in an exaggerated manner, they are unstable and shallow, often inadequate to a given situation and have a low level of tolerance to needs gratification. HPD persons feel uncomfortable if they are not the centre of attention and if such is the case will seek to obtain it one way or another. Communicating with an HPD person feels vague, and lacks details, whereas at the same time the persons will speak excessively but without any real content [10]. In terms of treatment options, it appears that the most successful is long- term psychotherapy. Change requires a complicated process, with numerous trials and difficult to manage; this is due to the specific difficulty of maintaining a relationship with an HPD person as their affectivity is unstable. According to Goldberg, J., the treatment objective should be helping the HPD client to gain awareness of their fears and motivations, associated to their dysfunctional thinking pattern and behaviour [9]. Another essential aspect is helping the client interact with others in a more positive and socially appropriate manner. Vîșcu, L., presents a couple of the aspects rendering difficult therapy with an HPD client: they can convince themselves that they do not need to change; somatising brings a secondary side-effect by ensuring a satisfaction of their need for attention; the high number of female HPD clients clashes with the high number of female therapists, avoided by female clients who prefer male therapists; histrionics look for therapists who support their pathology by manifesting an empathic and supportive behaviour (looking for approval); they see themselves as incompetent and play the seduction card to appear attractive and mask their complex. And finally, their belief that “if I get well, my therapist will get mad and abandon me” becomes another pitfall for the therapist working with an HPD client [11]. In an integrative-strategic treatment approach it is important to implement a line of work that crosses and targets psychological axes and the dimensions of the self (basal, central, plastic and external). The HPD person has a dissociated self and is the victim of a hurt basic self, lost in central beliefs generating non-adaptive patterns, which in turn, at the plastic self level, produce specific mechanisms with external manifestations in relation to the world; the HPD person is incapable of finding the substance of their real self. It is our personal perspective to consider as a priority therapeutic work on the cognitive, emotional and psychodynamic axes. These are the levels where one should identify non-adaptive patterns and where cognitive and experiential restructuring are necessary. On the emotional level, the therapy objectives are: developing frustration tolerance, impulsivity control, empathy practice and social skill, so that, when the client is not the centre of attention, the situation looses the catastrophe element [12]. Proposing to the client situations in which s/he could practice a behaviour according to new adaptative pattern would be extremely beneficial. From the psychodynamic point of view, it is important to work on gaining awareness of the