Personality Disorders Notes

General Personality Disorder

• Criterion for General Personality Disorder:
  • There are 4 criterions for General Personality Disorder.
  • Criterion A requires an enduring pattern that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture. This pattern needs to be manifested in at least two of the following areas: Cognition, Affectivity, Interpersonal functioning, and Impulse control.
  • Criterion B states that the enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations, leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, and the pattern is stable and of long duration, with its onset traceable back to at least adolescence or early adulthood.

Cluster A Disorders

• Alternative Names:
  • Also known as Odd-Eccentric, Strange-Bizarre, Peculiar-Erratic, or Atypical-Unusual.
• Similarities:
  • Disorders in Cluster A have topographical characteristics and behaviors similar to Schizophrenia, but their symptoms do not reach the severity seen in Schizophrenia. The patients can still function independently
• Comprises:
  • Paranoid Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, and Schizoid Personality Disorder.
• Schizotypal Personality Disorder:
  • Involves discomfort with and deficits in interpersonal relations, but individuals still desire close relationships.
  • Individuals who experienced physical and sexual abuse in their past are more likely to develop this disorder.
• Schizoid Personality Disorder:
  • May present as a lack of reaction to significant emotional events, such as not reacting when getting evicted, even when upset is the expected response.

Cluster B Disorders

• Alternative Name:
  • Dramatic-Emotional.
• Focus:
  • Individuals in this cluster focus on their appearance the most.
• Core Fear:
  • A core fear of Cluster B is abandonment.
• Histrionic Personality Disorder:
  • Also known as the “attention-seeking disorder.”
  • Individuals with Histrionic Personality Disorder learn from selective interpersonal reinforcement by family and peer relationships that leads to excessive attention-seeking behaviors.
• Antisocial Personality Disorder:
  • Initially referred to as moral insanity.
  • In DSM-III, it is overly focused on criminality.
  • Someone who steals and has utter disregard for the law may be diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
  • Individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder are most likely to get bored easily.
• Borderline Personality Disorder:
  • A patient presenting with suicidal thoughts, self-injurious behaviors, a history of unstable interpersonal relationships, persistent fears of abandonment, intense and inappropriate bouts of anger, and periods of paranoid ideation and dissociative symptoms is most likely suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.
  • Individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder most likely experience instability in self-concept and fear of abandonment.
  • Early learning factors associated with Borderline PD include more maternal and paternal absences, a higher likelihood of having experienced early trauma like sexual abuse, and an invalidating early attachment style.
  • Borderline PD is NOT completely based upon environmental factors, there are genetic predispositions.
  • Borderline Personality Disorder was described as “emotionally unstable disorder”.
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
  • The two subtypes of narcissism are: Grandiose and Vulnerable.
  • Those in a grandiose state are not aware that they might need help, therefore they are not actively searching for it
  • Grandiosity cannot be maintained. Grandiose self-states oscillate or co-occur with vulnerable self-states and affective dysregulation.
  • Someone who is aware that they have some personality disorder and decides to seek help for it is most likely in the Vulnerable subsection of Narcissistic Personality Disorder at that time.
  • Having helicopter parents or childhood trauma would most likely predispose a person to develop a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Paraphilias

• Classical Conditioning Model:
  • Pairing of a neutral stimulus with sexual arousal.
  • Early sexual experiences influence the shaping of subsequent sexual desires and fantasies.
  • After the classical conditioning sexual arousal fetishes with most participants, outside of the lab, it became extinct over time.
• Partialism:
  • If someone is distinctly and specifically attracted to their partner's foot (at the expense of the rest of their partner’s body).
• Definition of Paraphilias:
  • A persistent, intense, atypical sexual arousal pattern, independent of whether it is the source of impairment or distress.
• Jeffery Dahmer:
  • Most likely had a disorganized attachment.
  • His experience with the display mannequin best highlights his want for a partner that he could entirely control and keep, without the risk of being abandoned.