From a psychodynamic perspective, maladaptation in humans refers to unconscious psychological adjustments that once served protective functions during development but have become harmful or limiting in adulthood. These patterns develop as defense mechanisms against emotional pain, anxiety, or perceived threats to the self.

Key aspects of maladaptation from this perspective include:

1. Defence mechanisms gone awry: What began as necessary psychological shields (repression, projection, denial, etc.) become rigid response patterns that distort reality and interfere with healthy functioning.

2. Unconscious repetition compulsion: The tendency to unconsciously recreate early traumatic or difficult experiences in an attempt to master them, often leading to self-defeating patterns in relationships and life choices.

3. Transference distortions: The projection of feelings, expectations, and experiences from significant childhood relationships onto current relationships, creating misalignments between reality and perception.

4. Arrested development: When overwhelming anxiety or trauma occurs during a developmental stage, emotional growth may become fixed or "arrested" at that point, leaving the person with age-inappropriate responses to situations.

5. Internal object relations: Distorted internal representations of self and others formed during early relationships that continue to shape perceptions and responses in maladaptive ways.

6. Neurotic conflicts: Unresolved tensions between unconscious desires and prohibitions leading to symptom formation and self-sabotaging behaviours.

Psychodynamic therapy addresses maladaptation by bringing these unconscious patterns into awareness, exploring their developmental origins, and working through the associated emotions to develop more flexible and reality-based responses to present circumstances.

A classic example of maladaptation from a psychodynamic perspective would be a pattern of self-sabotage in intimate relationships.

Consider someone who grew up with an emotionally unpredictable parent. As a child, they learned that closeness could suddenly transform into rejection or abandonment. To protect themselves, they developed hyper-vigilance to signs of potential abandonment and preemptively withdrew emotionally when feeling vulnerable.

In adulthood, this manifests as a specific maladaptive pattern:

When a romantic relationship begins to deepen and shows promise, they unconsciously create conflicts or find flaws in their partner. They might become increasingly critical, emotionally distant, or even engage in behaviours that push the partner away. Sometimes they abruptly end relationships that are going well, citing vague reasons like "it doesn't feel right."

This pattern is maladaptive because:

1. The defence (emotional withdrawal) was originally adaptive for a child with limited options facing an unstable caregiver

2. It now operates automatically and largely outside awareness

3. It prevents the very closeness and stability the person consciously desires

4. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where relationships repeatedly fail, reinforcing the belief that intimacy leads to pain

The person might consciously want a loving relationship but unconsciously sabotage it due to fear of vulnerability based on early experiences. In psychodynamic therapy, bringing this pattern into awareness, connecting it to its developmental origins, and gradually working through the underlying fears can help transform this maladaptation into more flexible and fulfilling relationship behaviours.

Being maladaptive means engaging in patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaving that may have once served a protective function but now impair functioning and well-being rather than enhance it. These patterns typically develop as attempts to cope with difficult circumstances but become problematic when they:

1. Are applied rigidly across different situations without flexibility

2. Create more problems than they solve in current circumstances

3. Interfere with healthy development, relationships, or goal achievement

4. Cause significant emotional distress or dysfunction

5. Continue despite evidence they're not working effectively

For example, emotional detachment might help a child survive in a chaotic household with unreliable caregivers. This same detachment becomes maladaptive in adulthood when it prevents forming meaningful connections despite being in safer relationships.

Maladaptive responses often operate automatically and outside conscious awareness. They tend to be self-perpetuating because they temporarily reduce anxiety even while creating larger problems. A person might recognize the negative consequences of their patterns but feel unable to change them without understanding the underlying dynamics.

The psychological burden of maladaptive patterns isn't just the behaviors themselves but also the narrowing of possibilities they create - limiting experiences, relationships, and personal growth in ways that maintain emotional safety at the cost of fulfillment.

What distinguishes maladaptive from adaptive responses is not just their content but their rigidity, proportion to the situation, and their impact on overall functioning and quality of life.

The five maladaptive personality traits most commonly referenced in psychological literature are drawn from the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders in the DSM-5 and represent dimensional extremes of normal personality characteristics. These traits include:

1. Negative Affectivity: Experiencing frequent and intense negative emotions (anxiety, depression, guilt, worry, anger) disproportionate to situations. This includes emotional lability, anxiousness, separation insecurity, and persistent pessimistic outlook even when circumstances don't warrant it.

2. Detachment: Excessive withdrawal from social interactions and limited emotional expression. This involves avoidance of close relationships, restricted affective experience, anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), and limited capacity for empathy or intimacy with others.

3. Antagonism: Behaviours that put one at odds with others, including manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness, hostility, attention-seeking, and grandiosity. This trait involves excessive self-importance and entitlement with corresponding disregard for others' needs or feelings.

4. Disinhibition: Impulsivity and immediate gratification without considering consequences. This includes irresponsibility, impulsivity, difficulty with planning, distractibility, and risk-taking without appropriate concern for potential negative outcomes.

5. Psychoticism: Exhibiting unusual or eccentric behaviours and cognitions that are culturally incongruent. This involves unusual beliefs, perceptual disturbances, eccentric thinking or behaviour, and cognitive/perceptual dysregulation.

These traits exist on a continuum, and everyone exhibits these characteristics to some degree. They become maladaptive when they're inflexible, extreme, and cause significant distress or impairment in personal, social, or occupational functioning. Different combinations and intensities of these traits underlie various personality disorders and challenges in interpersonal functioning.