Summary

Our personalities reflect our characteristic manner of thinking, feeling, behaving and relating to others. Personality traits are integral to a person’s sense of self. While there are many theories of personality, one of the most well researched is the Five Factor Model, which organizes literally hundreds of traits into five broad dimensions: Neuroticism/Emotional Stability, Extraversion/Introversion, Openness/Closedness, Agreeableness/Antagonism, and Conscientiousness/Disinhibition.

When personality traits result in significant distress, social impairment, and/or occupational impairment, they might be considered to be a personality disorder. Personality disorders are characterized by a pervasive, consistent, and enduring pattern of behaviour and internal experience that differs significantly from that which is usually expected in the individual’s culture. Personality disorders typically have an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, persist over time, and cause distress or impairment.

The personality disorders are grouped into 3 clusters, based on their predominant symptoms. Cluster A personality disorders involve odd or eccentric thinking or behaviour (paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorder). Cluster B personality disorders are marked by dramatic, overly emotional, or unpredictable thinking or behaviour (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorder). Cluster C personality disorders involve anxious, fearful thinking or behaviour (avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

It is quite possible that in future revisions of the DSM, some of the personality disorders included in DSM-5 will no longer be included. In fact, for DSM-5 it was originally proposed that four be deleted. The personality disorders that were slated for deletion were histrionic, schizoid, paranoid, and dependent (APA, 2012). The rationale for the proposed deletions was in large part because they are said to have less empirical support than the diagnoses that were at the time being retained (Skodol, 2012). There is agreement within the field with regard to the empirical support for the borderline, antisocial, and schizotypal personality disorders (Mullins-Sweat, Bernstein, & Widiger, 2012; Skodol, 2012). However, there is a difference of opinion with respect to the empirical support for the dependent personality disorder (Bornstein, 2012; Livesley, 2011; Miller, Widiger, & Campbell, 2010; Mullins-Sweat et al., 2012).

Little is known about the specific etiology for most of the DSM-5 personality disorders. Because each personality disorder represents a constellation of personality traits, the etiology for the syndrome will involve a complex interaction of an array of different neurobiological vulnerabilities and dispositions with a variety of environmental, psychosocial events. Antisocial personality disorder, for instance, is generally considered to be the result of an interaction of genetic dispositions for low anxiousness, aggressiveness, impulsivity, and/or callousness, with a tough, urban environment, inconsistent parenting, poor parental role modeling, and/or peer support (Hare, Neumann, & Widiger, 2012). Borderline personality disorder is generally considered to be the result of an interaction of a genetic disposition to negative affectivity interacting with a malevolent, abusive, and/or invalidating family environment (Hooley, Cole, & Gironde, 2012).

“Summary: Personality Disorders” is adapted from Abnormal Psychology by Jordan A. Cummings, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.