Few investigators have attempted to lay a conceptual base for comparative studies of paranoia and depression within a single general framework. The paranoid-depressive continuum is an attempt to develop such a framework. (Author)

Work in developmental psychiatry and psychology has increasingly focused on how internal representations of early experiences with primary figures of childhood affect relationship formation in later childhood and adulthood. Investigations of the reflective self function, which involves mental states in which individuals become the subject of their…