Personality Disorders and Psychopathy

Vocabulary flashcards for reviewing lecture notes on personality disorders, focusing on characteristics, diagnostic criteria, and related concepts like ASPD, BPD, and psychopathy.

Personality Disorder (Axis 2)

Behaviors similar to Schizophrenia, including flat affect, odd thought or speech patterns, and aberrations/disturbances in one's understanding of reality, but symptoms do not reach the severity seen in Schizophrenia.

Paranoid Personality Disorder

Characterized by paranoia in one specific aspect or situation while globally demonstrating normal behavior.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Symptoms of Schizophrenia that are not severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of Schizophrenia, including mild perceptual and cognitive distortions.

Criterion A (Personality Disorder)

An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture, manifested in cognition, affectivity, interpersonal function, or impulse control.

Criterion B (Personality Disorder)

The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations, not just showing up in one area but multiple areas.

Criterion C (Personality Disorder)

The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Criterion D (Personality Disorder)

The pattern is stable and of long duration, with onset traced back to at least adolescence or early childhood; cannot be diagnosed in childhood.

Cluster A Personality Disorders

Characterized by odd or eccentric behaviors and thought patterns.

Emotional Dysregulation

Demonstrating highly erratic emotional responses.

Histrionic Personality Disorder

Characterized by exaggerated emotionality that lacks depth; emotions are shallow and shift rapidly; discomfort when not the center of attention; inappropriately sexual and seductive behavior; extreme focus on appearance.

Schizoid Personality Disorder

Characterized by flat affect, showing little emotional response to experiences; discomfort with and deficit in interpersonal relations; often avoid close relationships.

Topography (of behavior)

What a behavior looks like externally.

Underlying Function (of behavior)

Why a person is engaging in a behavior - what the behavior is trying to achieve.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

Characterized by a disregard for and violation of the rights of others, failure to conform to social norms regarding lawful behavior, deceitfulness, impulsivity, irritability, recklessness, and lack of remorse.

Moral Insanity

An early term for ASPD, characterized by a lack of moral faculties without psychotic derangement or deficits in reasoning abilities.

Psychopathy

Similar to ASPD, includes grandiosity, arrogance, superficiality, an inability to form emotional bonds, a lack of anxiety, and a low level of baseline arousal.

Cluster C Personality Disorders

Characterized by anxious and fearful behavior, extreme concern about criticism and abandonment leading to impaired relationships.

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Feelings of extreme social inhibition, inadequacy, and sensitivity to negative criticism and rejection; avoidance of activities involving people for fear of criticism or rejection.

Dependent Personality Disorder

Feelings of helplessness, submissiveness, dependence, reassurance-seeking; difficulty making independent decisions; avoidance of adult activities and tolerance of abuse and maltreatment.

Healthy Narcissism

Maintaining a positive, balanced view of oneself, seeking validation without harm to others, and being motivated to grow and succeed.

Grandiose Narcissism

Conceited and domineering attitudes and behaviors, repressing negative aspects of self, distorting disconfirming external information, and engaging in fantasies of unlimited power.

Vulnerable Narcissism

Fragile/hypersensitive, characterized by an inability to consistently maintain a grandiose sense of self, prone to narcissistic injury, and emotional states of shame, anxiety, and depression.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Characterized by instability in emotion, cognition, behavior, sense of self, and interpersonal relationships; profound fears of abandonment.

“Good enough mothering”

Parental response to the child’s inner experiences are met with appropriate or erratic responses from parents and caregivers

Executive Neurocognition

Refers to a set of high-level cognitive processes that allow individuals to control and regulate their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, especially when faced with conflict (e.g. interference control, cognitive inhibition).

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)

A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.

Paraphilia

Sexual arousal to non-normative or deviant stimuli and the associated sexual behavior; represents deviations in the qualitative aspect of sexuality or direction of sexual feelings.

Pedophilia

Adults for whom prepubescent children are the focus of erotic attraction and interest.

Exhibitionism

Recurrent urge for exposure of the genitals to strangers or unsuspecting persons; arousal response to shock, fear, or embarrassment of victims.

Voyeurism

Involves the observation of an unsuspecting person or persons who are nude, disrobing, or engaging in a sexual act.

BAS (Behavioral Activation System)

Responds to cues of reward or non-punishment; drives approach behavior, associated with impulsivity and reward sensitivity.

BIS (Behavioral Inhibition System)

Responds to cues of punishment, frustration, or novelty; inhibits behavior, especially in situations of goal conflict; associated with anxiety, caution, and risk avoidance.