The 8 Basic Qualities in All Personality Disorders - usan Krauss

From the earliest attempts by psychiatrists to diagnose longstanding deficits in adaptive functioning known as personality disorders, to the most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 2013, there remains confusion and controversy.  How many of these disorders are there, how distinct are they from one another, do they show stability over time, and- importantly- can people who have them be cured? Some of the personality disorders seem to provide sources of endless fascination to professionals and laypersons alike, such as narcissistic, antisocial, and borderline personality disorders.  Each of these terms has become part of popular parlance, even as their exact meanings become blurred and potentially distorted with each passing year.

This diagnostically complicated situation is not aided by the fact that psychiatrists and psychologists are at odds over whether there are, in fact, distinct personality disorders or whether they rest on one or more continuums or dimensions. The old “Axis II” of the previous DSM put the disorders onto a separate plane from other psychological conditions that, in contrast, were regarded as true “diseases” that could be “cured.” Axis II, by contrast, was a part of the fabric of the individual’s psyche that could not be excised.

 In a new version of an old approach to personality disorders as reflecting “styles” rather than stable disorders, University of Minnesota psychologist Sylvia Wilson and colleagues (2017) took the perspective of interpersonal theory to examine the interpersonal styles associated with each personality disorder.  As they note, “Interpersonal style is defined by one’s characteristic approach to interpersonal situations and relationships” (p. 679). It includes the attitudes you have toward relationships, your goals in your relationships, how you interpret what happens in your relationships, the way you behave, and the way you interpret the behaviors of others. This all-inclusive concept, furthermore, determines the quality of essentially all of your relationships, from those closest to you to the ones you interact with on a more formal basis.

The extensive results provide profiles

useful not only classification, but also for understanding how people within each of the disorders approaches their relationships. For people in relationships with such individuals, it’s a framework that could help you understand them in more depth.

With this in mind, let’s examine the main interpersonal traits for each disorder:

Paranoid: Vindictive and cold stand out as the two predominant themes.  To a lesser extent, people with this personality disorder are also intrusive.

Schizoid: Coldness with a combination of social avoidance form the main traits for this personality disorder’s profile. It’s unlikely that schizoid individuals, according to the findings, will try to exploit you.

Schizotypal: Individuals with this personality disorder score high on all 3 of the above traits—namely, vindictive, cold, and avoidant. This profile fits with the disorder’s main criterion of odd, eccentric, and socially awkward behavior.

Antisocial: The extreme of the psychopathic personality, people with this disorder scored high on the traits of domineering, vindictive, and intrusive, with slightly high scores on coldness.

Borderline: A broad set of interpersonal traits appeared in the studies of people with borderline personality disorder, but the highest scores were on vindictive and intrusive. You might experience this sense when with someone who has this disorder, particularly when you feel that your boundaries are being violated and you’re being held accountable to an extreme degree for your behaviors and possible shortcomings.

Histrionic: This personality disorder is rarely diagnosed, and was almost eliminated in the new DSM. However, the interpersonal trait profile showed distinctly high scores on domineering and, particularly, intrusiveness. These individuals are unlikely, in contrast, to be cold and socially avoidant.

Narcissistic: Remarkably similar to antisocial in the interpersonal style model, individuals with this personality disorder were also high in domineering, vindictive, cold, and intrusive interpersonal style traits. These qualities are ones that you’ll almost invariably encounter when dealing with people who fit this diagnostic category.

Avoidant: As you might expect, people high in avoidant personality disorder are most likely to be high on coldness and social avoidance, but low on domineering and intrusiveness. As the avoidant personality disorder is so aptly described in terms of interpersonal relationships, it makes sense that the profile as revealed in research fits this pattern.

Dependent: The dependent personality disorder showed a pattern of scores marked by the highest scores on intrusiveness and lowest, as you might expect, on domineering. Individuals with this disorder, who have an excessive need to be taken care of, readily submit to others. Their second highest score was on vindictiveness but they were also high on exploitativeness.

Obsessive-compulsive: There were no stand-out, distinguishing, features of this personality disorder in the overall analysis which yielded a relatively flat profile across the 8 traits. This finding suggests that perhaps this personality disorder doesn’t involve as much interpersonal dysfunction as has been thought although individuals who fit the criteria of excessive perfectionism, inflexibility, and restricted expression of emotions may have trouble at work or in relationships. They may also, however, achieve higher status and wealth, as other research has indicated. There’s a trade-off then, when an individual has such an extreme work ethic that he or she may pay less attention to relationships.

In summarizing the findings, the authors concluded that, without question, the “personality disorders are associated with dysfunctional interpersonal styles” and “core disturbances in self” (p. 720).  From a diagnostic point of view, the authors also believe that the idea of discarding the personality disorder categories and replacing them with a rating system also receives support from their findings. All but obsessive-compulsive personality disorder appeared to have impaired interpersonal relationships and, that in some of the analyses were particularly strong for family and less so for romantic domains.

There is still much to be learned about personality disorders, as the authors note. However, these findings suggest that cutting to the core of relationship difficulties and disturbances in sense of self provides the best way of understanding people who seem to fit the personality disorder definition.  You don’t need to become a diagnostician to be able to use these findings in your daily life. Looking at people who may be narcissistic or psychopathic in terms of their interpersonal style rather than discrete categories provides perhaps a more realistic, if not sympathetic, way of relating to them.