Symptoms of personality disorders can be viewed as maladaptive variations within domains like traits, emotions, cognitions, motives, interpersonal behavior, and self-concepts.
These disorders can be seen as maladaptive variations or combinations of normal personality traits.
Several disorders involve maladaptive variations on common motives, especially power and intimacy.
Cognitive processes can become distorted in personality disorders.
Several disorders include extreme variation in experienced emotions.
Most involve distortion of self-concept.
Social relationships, especially interpersonal and sexual behavior, are frequently disturbed or maladaptive.
Biology forms the building blocks of several personality disorders.
Disorders of personality can provide insight into the normal workings of personality.
The Concept of Disorder
Psychological Disorder:
A pattern of behavior or experience that is distressing and painful to a person.
Leads to disability or impairment in important life domains.
Associated with increased risk for further suffering, loss of function, death, or confinement.
Abnormal Psychology:
Study of mental disorders, including thought disorders, emotional disorders, and personality disorders.
What Is Abnormal?
Statistical definition: Whatever is different from normal is abnormal.
Social definition: Whatever society does not tolerate.
Statistical and social definitions are tied to changing social or cultural norms.
Psychologists thus look within persons, inquiring about subjective feelings, such as anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction, and feelings of loneliness.
Psychopathology: The study of Mental Disorders.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the widely accepted system for diagnosing and describing mental disorders.
Currently in the Fifth Edition.
Published by the American Psychiatric Association.
What Is a Personality Disorder?
An enduring pattern of experience and behavior that differs greatly from the expectations of a person’s culture.
Disorder usually manifests in more than one of the following areas:
Thoughts
Feelings
Sociability
The ability to control one’s own behavior
A Personality Disorder is a pattern of behavior that is rigid and is displayed across a variety of situations, leading to distress in key areas of life, such as work and relationships.
Typically has a long history in a person’s life and is often traced back to adolescence or childhood.
Must not be caused by drug abuse, medication, or other medical condition.
All personality disorders involve impaired social relationships.
Culture, Age, and Gender: The Effect of Context
Before defining behavior as revealing personality disorder, the following must be taken into account:
Culture
Age
Gender
Antisocial Personality Disorder
The person afflicted has a lack of concern for social norms.
Impulsive, easily irritated, and assaultive.
Reckless and irresponsible.
Lack of guilt feelings or remorse.
Indifferent to the suffering of others.
Borderline Personality Disorder
The person afflicted is marked by instability of relationships, emotions, and self-image.
There is a deep fear of abandonment.
There is a tendency to aggression and self- harm.
Histrionic Personality Disorder
The person afflicted is marked by excessive attention seeking and emotionality.
Often, the person is sexually provocative.
Opinions are shallow.
Suggestible.
Has a strong need for attention.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Need to be admired
Strong sense of self-importance
Lack of insight into other people’s feelings or needs
Sense of entitlement
Feelings of superiority
Self-esteem appears strong but is fragile
Inability to recognize the needs or desires of others
Envious of others
The Eccentric Cluster
Includes schizoid, schizotypal, and paranoid personality disorders.
Persons diagnosed with disorders belonging to the cluster tend to have trouble with emotional control and have specific difficulties getting along with others.
Included are the following personality disorders:
Antisocial
Borderline
Histrionic
Narcissistic
Schizoid Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Detached from normal social relationships.
Obtains little pleasure from bodily or sensory experiences.
Appears inept or socially clumsy.
Passive in the face of unpleasant events.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Anxious in social relations and avoids people.
Appears ‘different’ and does not conform.
Suspicious of others.
Eccentric beliefs, such as belief in Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) or magic.
Disorganized thoughts and speech.
Paranoid Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Distrustful of others.
Misinterprets social events as threatening.
Harbors resentment toward others.
Prone to pathological jealousy.
Argumentative and hostile.
The Anxious Cluster
Persons with these disorders appear:
Anxious
Nervous
Fearful
Distressed
The Anxious Cluster includes the following personality disorders:
Avoidant
Dependent
Obsessive-compulsive
Avoidant Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Feelings of inadequacy.
Sensitivity to criticism.
Restriction of activities to avoid embarrassments.
Low self-esteem.
Dependent Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Excessive need to be taken care of.
Submissive.
Seeks reassurance from others.
Rarely takes initiative and rarely disagrees with others.
Does not work well independently.
May tolerate abuse from others to obtain support.
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
Characteristics:
Preoccupied with order.
Strives for perfection.
Devoted to work and seeks little time for leisure or friendship.
Frequently miserly or stingy.
Rigid, inflexible, and stubborn.
Prevalence of Personality Disorders
Prevalence refers to the total number of cases present within a given population during a particular period of time.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is the most common with a prevalence rate of 3.2%.
Antisocial, schizoid, paranoid, and avoidant personality disorders have a prevalence rate of over 2%.
Histrionic, dependent, and narcissistic disorders are the least common, with less than 1% prevalence rate each.
Total prevalence rate for having at least one personality disorder is about 11%.
Gender Differences in Personality Disorders
Antisocial Personality Disorder occurs in men with a prevalence rate of about 4.5 percent and in women at about a 0.8 percent prevalence rate.
Female antisocial adults are more likely to have suffered severe physical, emotional, and sexual abuse than male antisocial adults.
Issues:
Gender biases in diagnoses.
Gender differences in the manifestation of the different disorders.
Dimensional Model of Personality Disorders
Distinctions between normal personality traits and disorders are in terms of:
Extremity
Rigidity
Maladaptiveness
There are parallels with chemistry:
A little of this trait and some of that trait amplified to extremely high (or low) levels result in a specific disorder.
Causes of Personality Disorders
Abnormal psychology, or psychopathology, is a strongly descriptive science.
Most work examine both biological and environmental causes of personality disorders.
Summary and Evaluation
The hallmark of psychological definition of abnormal is anything that prevents a person from having satisfying relationships or from carrying on productive work
All of the personality disorders refer to symptoms that cause problems with relationships or with work, or both.
Personality disorders are enduring patterns of experience and behavior that differ greatly from the norm and expectations of a person’s social group.
Disorder shows up in abnormalities in how a person thinks, feels, gets along with others, and the person’s ability to control his/her own actions.
Pattern is displayed across situations, leading to the distress, for either themselves or others, in key areas of life such as love and work.
Disorder typically has a long history in a person’s life.