Sidney Blatt has proposed a theory of personality which focuses on self-criticism and dependency. Blatt's theory is significant because he evaluates dimensions of personality as they relate to psychopathology and therapy. According to Blatt, personality characteristics affect our experience of depression, and are rooted in the development of our interpersonal interactions and self-identity. He theorizes that personality can be understood in terms of two distinct dimensions - interpersonal relatedness and self-definition. These two dimensions not only represent personality characteristics, but are products of a lifelong developmental process. Disruption in self-definition or identity leads to self-criticism, and disruption in relatedness leads to dependency. Zuroff (2016) found that self-criticism showed stability across time both as a personality trait and as an internal state. Such a finding is important as it supports the fact that self-criticism can be measured in the same manner as other personality traits.