Understanding Personality Disorders
How does one describe people who cheat needlessly and lie without
reason in all kinds of contexts? Or people who are always suspicious of
others' intentions? Or people who respond passively to all provocations?
Such people are hardly psychotic, for they often have a good grip on reality.
Nor are they necessarily dominated by unwarranted fears,
sexual difficulties, addictions, and the like. Nevertheless, their behaviors
strike observers as odd, as deviant, or as abnormal. Theirs seem to be a disorder
of personality. Their characteristic ways of perceiving and thinking
about themselves and their environment are inflexible, and a source of social
and occupational maladjustment. In addition, their behaviors may well
be a source of distress for themselves and others.
Their disorders are called personality disorders.
Consider a young employee who is up for promotion. She knows she has
done a good job, and that she probably deserves appropriate credit. But, she
feels anxious, thinking perhaps that one ofher colleagues is trying to undercut
her achievements. Learning of her fears, her friends call her "paranoid,"
pointing out that she is probably imagining the situation. Reassured, she is
able to go about her business. Most of us have had similar concerns. Our
worries are ones that grow out of specific situations. They are time-limited
and easily dispelled. But some people's worries are not so easily relieved.
Indeed, they spend much of their lives scanning the environment for cues
that validate their paranoid feelings. Unlike the employee who has a few
"paranoid" moments, individuals with the paranoid personality disorder
are always suspicious of others' motives. While they are able to function and
are not psychotic, they are continually troubled by deep distrust.
The personality disorders have provided a fascinating source of psychological
study across the decades because they ascribe a stability and sturdiness
to personality and behavior that extends across time and context. The
personality dlisorders are fundamentally disorders of traits, that is, disorders
that are reflected in the individual's tendency to perceive and respond to the
environment in broad and maladaptive ways. Perhaps the most fascinating
of these disorders is the antisocial personality disorder. Known also as sociopathy and
psychopathy, (tf'.s) disorder has been studied extensively and is
the best understood of the personality disorders.
Note: People who suffer from the psychological disorders that were examined in
earlier create distress for their families and friends, but mainly they
themselves are the ones who suffer. In contrast, the suffering in an individual
with the antisocial personality disorder is muted. The hallmark of the
disorder is a rapacious attitude toward others, a chronic insensitivity and
indifference to the rights of other people that is marked by lying, stealing,
cheating, and worse.
Whereas those who suffer other psychological difficulties
may be unpleasant, contact with antisocial personalities may be downright
dangerous, for many of them are outright criminals. Because their
numbers are not small, they constitute a major social and legal problem, as
well as a psychological one. According to DSM-4, a little under 1 percent
of women and about 3 percent ofmen suffer the disorder.
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