Personality Disorders

Personality Disorders

• Disruptive, inflexible, enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal functioning that are stable over time and across situations,
• deviate from the expectations of the individual’s culture

Anxious or Fearful Personality Disorders�(Cluster C)

Avoidant Personality Disorder

• So sensitive about being rejected that personal relationships become difficult
• See how this differs from Social Anxiety Disorder HERE.

Odd or Eccentric Personality Disorders�(Cluster A)

Paranoid Personality Disorder

• Pervasive mistrust and suspiciousness of others are the main characteristic

Dramatic, Emotional, or Erratic Personality Disorders�(Cluster A)

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Histrionic Personality Disorder�

• Displays shallow, attention-getting emotions
• Goes to great lengths to gain others’ praise and reassurance.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder�

• Exaggerates their own importance, aided by fantasies.
• Find criticism hard to accept, often reacting in rage or shame.

Borderline Personality Disorder

• Instability of relationships, self-image, affects & control over impulses.
• See difference between Borderline Personality and Bipolar Disorder HERE.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Antisocial Personality Disorder

• Used to be called psychopath or sociopath
• Evidence often seen in childhood (conduct disorder)
• Shows absolutely no concern for the rights or feelings of other people
• Manipulative, can be charming, can be cruel and destructive
• Blaming the victim for his or her own stupidity
• Has no conscience and shows no remorse
• Occurs in approximately 6 percent of men and 1 percent of women
• See NBC News video on psychopaths

The Mind of the Psychopath

• Psychopathy, or antisocial personality disorder, is characterized by a lack of conscience for wrongdoing. The psychopathic person (usually male) may be overtly aggressive and violent or a charming con artist; he shows little remorse for wrongdoing, even against friends and family.

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• Dr. Robert Hare, a leading researcher in the field of psychopathy, developed a test called the lexical decision paradigm. Brain activity (EEG) is recorded while a person views strings of letters and presses a button whenever the letters form a word. The words are neutral (table, plate) or negative emotional (cancer, death) in content.

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• Hare found that in psychopathic persons, unlike in normal persons, the brain processes neutral and emotional words in the same way, demonstrating a lack of affect.

The Murderous Mind

PET scans illustrate reduced activation (less red and yellow) in a murderer's frontal cortex-a brain area that helps brake impulsive, aggressive behavior. (From Raine, 1999.) – Found 11% less frontal lobe tissue than normal

Biological Causes of Antisocial Personality

• Two combined factors predicted antisocial problems:
1. Childhood maltreatment
2. A gene that altered neurotransmitter balance
• Either “bad” environment “turned on” these genes or the genes made these children more sensitive to the maltreatment.
• When shown emotional arousing pictures, they display lower levels of heart rate and perspiration responses and less activity in emotional areas of their brain.
• Hyper-reactive dopamine reward system that may lead them to be more impulsive to do something rewarding despite the consequences.