Javaney Thomas
ENGL 21003
Michael Grove
March 20, 2018
Scientist Profile

The Interesting Professor Eric Fertuck

Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Dr. Eric Fertuck, has done significant research in the field of mental illness, by employing an approach that deals with social cognitive neuroscience to understand and treat psychological disturbance. Additionally, as a psychotherapy and psychopathology researcher, he is well equipped with the insight and experience to understand these disturbances effectively.
In my interview with Professor Fertuck, he described the aspects of his varying field, its importance to him, and the state of the mental illness today. As depicted by the Public Health Agency of Canada, “mental illnesses are characterized by alterations in thinking, mood or behavior associated with significant distress and impaired functioning ”. What causes these alterations and why only some people suffer from mental illness are the type of questions that peek general interest in the topic of Psychology, as it did to Professor Eric Fertuck. He recounted on his late teenage years where he became interested in “self-improvement” and trying to figure out his career path. In one account, he remembers writing a paper on Eric Erickson, a then prominent German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst. I found humor in this because Eric Erickson coined the term “identity crisis”, a term fitting for the younger Fertuck at the time. He acknowledged this stage in his life, and was aware of it at the time, therefore when he found Eric Erickson’s work on stages of psycho-social development, it resonated with him. “I found his writing very inspiring, and I understood it… I wrote the paper, then I got positive feedback from my teachers about it, so, that probably was a pivotal experience that allowed me to think, Oh, maybe I can do this psychology thing”. To get a sense of what the psychology field entails, I directed my inquiries to Professor Fertuck, about his first clinical experience. He recounted being an undergraduate at Michigan State, where he got involved with a class “that was part research, part intervention, where the idea was to take in youth who had some dust-up with the police or had gotten into some sort of trouble…nothing violent”. He went on to a specific memory of a young boy around eight or ten who struggled with enuresis, with a strict father who used a belt as a symbol of fear to discipline the kids. “The study was to see if the kids who went into this program were better off in the long run…than the kids who went into the traditional juvenile delinquency system”. I then asked if he felt that the juvenile detention centers were less effective, to which he replied, “I haven’t kept up with the research…my memory was that they had some evidence that it was better in the long run for these kids to be diverted from the justice system”. This left me with the personal question, are most delinquent children showing early signs of BPD? Is BPD on the rise? Therefore, I asked, “What personality disorder do you believe needs to be addressed with much higher concentration for an urgent solution for society today?” To which he replied, “The one that is probably becoming really interesting and relevant-more so than it has in the past and also has a big gap in research- is narcissistic personality”. According to Dr. Steve Bressert narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder is “characterized by a long-standing pattern of grandiosity (either in fantasy or actual behavior), an overwhelming need for admiration, and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others ”. Narcissistic people are those that feel entitled to your undivided attention as they feel they are special, without it, they may become very emotional. Professor Fertuck continued to say, “we have students who have started to look at narcissism in its pathological form, how it impacts both that person and the people around them and how it impacts their capacity to make decisions”. Additionally, he brought to light the relevance of it as “there seems to be a rise over the last couple generations-at least in western societies-where people are getting more narcissistic, they have a more inflated view of themselves, they imagine the only life worth having is one where your famous”. Being a part of one of these generations, I brought up topics such as Kanye West’s personality, which led us to briefly discuss the effects of social media and gratification. In this he concluded that due to the current culture of society, narcissism is a “particular timely” mental disorder to study at this time.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), BPD is “a mental illness marked by an ongoing pattern of varying moods, self-image, and behavior. These symptoms often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships ”. These “impulsive actions” in relationships, and the damage incurred unto BPD patients, were the topic of interest in one of Fertuck’s most recent joint-research papers titled “Romantic Relationship Dysfunction in Borderline Personality Disorder-A Naturalistic Approach to Trustworthiness Perception” (Miano, Fertuck, Roepke & Dziobek 2016). I immediately noticed the phrase “Naturalistic Approach”. This could mean the research allowed and depended upon unrestricted factors to take place in the relationships studied. Simply put, they aimed to study relationships in their daily mundane fashion. Additionally, the inquiry arose about the basis of employing intimate relationships to analyze the effects it has on BPD patients. My assumption was that Borderline Personality Disorder, as characterized by NIMH as “intense episodes of anger, depression and anxiety”, would be best observed in romantic relationships because these are solely based on emotions and provide a catalyst for natural mood swings to occur. This gives logical reason to employ this type of relationship, rather than using guardian-child, or doctor-patient relationships as they open the doors to subjectivism and unwanted factors. However, according to the cited paper in the research “Social domain dysfunction and disorganization in borderline personality disorder ” (Hill et al., 2008), BPD symptoms were specifically associated with romantic relationship dysfunction in the paper’s study of social dysfunction.
My final question posed to the Professor asked him why he was interested in Borderline Personality Disorder. Professor Fertuck- “I always wanted to work with a group of people who had what was considered a little bit more severe mental health problems, but I also wanted a group that responded to psychotherapy. I got interested in psychotherapy and psychoanalytic approaches as an undergraduate…and that gave me some direction. I pursued graduate programs that had that and then in graduate school I started learning a little more about personality disorders and borderline personality disorder. These folks are struggling often with suicide, self-injury, problems in their relationships…but the best treatment for them is specialized psychotherapy…most of them get better and you see their progress”. He added “they are “constantly surprising you, there are always new things to learn and it’s not that well studied so it also allows me to research them and go back and forth between my clinical work and research”.
In the paper “Unstable interpersonal relationships”, was the term coined to describe the status of BPD affected couples. This also supports the notion that BPD patients cannot fully support healthy relationships. At the apex of Professor Fertuck’s report, it is clearly stated that to measure the effects of BPD in couples, a scale based on “trustworthiness perception” was employed as their hypothesis expected trustworthiness to be significantly diminished after a relationship-threatening situation is presented, this result being opposite from healthy couples. A total of 134 couples was used, they were divided into two groups, BPD and HC (healthy control). The BPD group in which the women had the diagnoses, had 31 couples (N=62), and HC had 36 couples (N=72). I personally thought this was a sizeable group for the study considering the couples did not significantly differ in age, intelligence or relationship length as described in the “Method” section (p.282) of Fertuck’s paper. Additionally, the American Psychology Association (APA) approved DSM-IV under Axis II Disorders was used to administer interviews along with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders. The DSM-IV Axis II Disorders, “is a model used to diagnose personality disorders and intellectual disabilities that arise in childhood ”. Secondly, the Axis I Disorders, is a model that diagnoses “acute symptoms for clinical treatment… such as schizophrenia or depressive episode ”. Employment of these manuals eliminated any HC couples who displayed symptoms congruent to the models. For clinical couples, they were excluded if any displayed “current manic or psychotic disorder” (p.282). On page 283, “all couples talked about their favorite film genre, …there most severe personal fear or sorrow during the past year” and third about a reason for breakup. The results were that for each set of questions on average, the HC control couples upheld a stronger inter-relational trust in their partners than the BPD couples. This was especially prevalent in the set of questions that addressed personal fear and conditions that could cause a breakup. Therefore, it is concluded that BPD patients do in fact have lesser interpersonal trust and “the perceived tenderness in the relationship” as said earlier in the paper (p.281), is in fact a protective factor to sustain the relationship from the fear of losing a partner.

References
“Borderline Personality Disorder.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml.
“Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms.” Psych Central, 24 Feb. 2018, psychcentral.com/disorders/borderline-personality-disorder/symptoms/.
DeepDiveAdmin. “Axis I.” PSYweb Complete Mental Health Site, www.psyweb.com/DSM_IV/jsp/Axis_I.jsp.
DeepDiveAdmin. “Axis II.” PSYweb Complete Mental Health Site, www.psyweb.com/DSM_IV/jsp/Axis_II.jsp.
Hill, J, et al. “Social Domain Dysfunction and Disorganization in Borderline Personality Disorder.” Psychological Medicine, europepmc.org/articles/PMC2828321.
“Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Psych Central, 17 Dec. 2017, psychcentral.com/disorders/narcissistic-personality-disorder.
Public Health Agency of Canada. “Mental Illness.” Canada.ca, 23 July 2015, www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/chronic-diseases/mental-illness.html.