Toward a cultural history of the personality disorders

European Psychiatry, 2007

Paternal impositions, taking implicit social aims, are stimuli that wait, of child, a response; initially they do not work in an automatic way (due to gravitational Natural Inertia of organism tending to be interrelated with the Universe), but as punishment and recompense are imposing on him, time between stimulus-response will be diminishing until reaching the automatization. Reinforced and rewarded such a process, the individual, will be suitable to generate unthinking answers before any stimulus foreign to his essence. Given these conditions any impulse, image or idea arisen in mind unconsciously it turns into stimulus, to which, man, will not be able to escape, undo or obviate having to exercise necessarily an immediate response, according to needs of social rules, avoiding this way non-adaptation or interior conflict: Conditional Inertia. Conclusions: The dynamic mind-body, in 'Mental Illness', is a reply of the interrelationship father-child but stylized, in which, to less time between stimulus-response the worst it will be the forecast.

Current psychiatry reports, 2018

This review discusses cultural trends, challenges, and approaches to assessment and treatment of personality traits and disorders. Specific focus include current developments in the Asian, Italian, Iranian, and Australian societies, as well as the process of acculturation, following moves between cultures with the impact on healthy and disordered personality function. Each culture with its specific history, dimensions, values, and practices influences and gears the individual and family or group in unique ways that affect personality functioning. Similarly, each culture provides means of protection and assimilation as well as norms for acceptance and denunciations of specific behaviors and personality traits. The diagnosis of personality disorders and their treatment need to take into consideration the individual in the context of the culture and society in which they live. Core personality problems, especially emotion dysregulation and interpersonal functioning are specifically inf...

While people in most cultures recognize bizarre behavior as a special type of problem, they do not always understand it as an illness, nor do they classify such “crazy” behavior with the other forms of deviance or distress that we include in the category of mental disorder. It is not only the boundaries of disorder that differ across cultures, however, the concept of “mental disorder” itself is a creation of Western cultural history for which no exact parallel can be found in many other traditions.

Current Psychiatry Reviews, 2008

The diagnosis of personality disorders is highly dependent on how a society views certain behavior. Self concept, adaptation and social context are important aspects of the cultural dimensions of personality disorders. However, the relevance and implications of the influence of sociocultural factors are seen differently. Accordingly, there are very distinct conceptional, nosological and diagnostic approaches for classifying personality dispositions and personality disorders in a cross-cultural perspective. The present paper describes the social and cultural context of migration from an European perspective. A review of the literature on mental health risk in immigrants is given, and special focus is placed on the impact of culture on the development of personality in general and on the emergence and manifestation versus prevention of personality disorders in specific. Due to globalization and migration processes clinicians and therapists are increasingly called upon to assess the level of personality functioning, not only in patients from different ethnic backgrounds, but also in traumatized refugees and migrants. Multiple social and cultural factors have an influence on each level of the diagnostic and therapeutic process. In addition to thorough background knowledge concerning trauma, migration and culture specific issues, cultural sensitivity and cultural competence are requisite for clinicians and therapists.

Roczniki Psychologiczne, 2017

In this paper we aim to portray the evolution of the understanding, classification and diagnosis of personality disorders. We analyze the characteristics of normal and abnormal personality in the light of the debate about the nature of mental disorders. A brief historical outline of the conceptualization of personality disorders is followed by a description of the evolution of contemporary diagnostic systems. The limitations and problems of these systems are analyzed.

1991

For more than a decade, research studies on the various personality disorders have been carried out at an ever-expanding pace (Blashfield and McElroy, 1987; Gorton and Akhar, 1990). Factors promoting this research have included the establishment within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) of a separate axis for the diagnosis of personality disorders, the enumeration within DSM-III of diagnostic criteria for these conditions, and the development of standardized interviews for the assessment of personality disorders. Innovations such as these are expected to advance the scientific stature of personality disorder research.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

Histrionic Personality Disorder is one of the most ambiguous diagnostic categories in psychiatry. Hysteria is a classical term that includes a wide variety of psychopathological states. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks blamed a displaced womb, for many women's afflictions. Several researchers from the 18th and 19th centuries studied this theme, namely, Charcot who defined hysteria as a "neurosis" with an organic basis and Sigmund Freud who redefined "neurosis" as a re-experience of past psychological trauma. Histrionic personality disorder (HPD) made its first official appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders II (DSM-II) and since the DSM-III, HPD is the only disorder that kept the term derived from the old concept of hysteria. The subject of hysteria has reflected positions about health, religion and relationships between the sexes in the last 4000 years, and the discussion is likely to continue.

Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 2000

On the basis of methodology used in previous research on sex criterion bias, this study examined ethnicity criterion bias of personality disorders (PDs) defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., Rev.) and included examination of sex as well as ethnicity. A card-sort analysis using undergraduate college students as sorters indicated that criteria for all of the PDs were applied disproportionately by ethnicity, resulting in particular ethnic groups receiving diagnoses for specific PDs. Criteria were sorted systematically such that diagnoses of antisocial and paranoid PDs were assigned to African Americans, schizoid PD was assigned to Asian Americans, and schizotypal PD was assigned to Native Americans. All other PDs were assigned to European Americans, whereas none of the criteria were sorted resulting in any PD diagnosis being applied to Latinos. Implications for clinicians, methodological considerations, and recommendations for future research ar...

Journal of Personality Disorders, 2002

We evaluated the impact of three factors that have been suggested to be important determinants of the diagnostic process pertaining to personality disorders: (a) the number of features representative of a personality disorder category; (b) the extent to which those features are typical of the category, and (c) the dominance or proportion of category features to the total number of features. Thirty-two clinical psychologists evaluated 12 profiles of hypothetical patients in which these factors were varied factorially. The results revealed strong effects of typicality and dominance, but no effects for number. Implications for the assessment and classification of personality disorders are discussed. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the classification of personality disorders. Most current nosological systems, including recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Association, 1980, 1987, 1994) are rooted largely in classical models of categorization. If all members of a classical category possess the same set of necessary and sufficient features, it follows that all category members are equally good and representative instances of the category, and equally poor and unrepresentative examples of other categories. According to the classical model, category membership is inherently clear-cut, with homogeneity within categories, clearly demarcated boundaries, and heterogeneity between categories. These assumptions, however, do not reflect the more complex reality of many psychological concepts. Such models, in which a list of necessary and sufficient criteria define category membership, have been found to be problematic in relation to many psychological concepts, including the personality disorders (Cantor & Mischel, 1977; Lakoff, 1987; Rosch, 1973, 1978). The personality disorders defy the assumptions of classical categorization in several ways. These include the high degree of heterogeneity within each disorder, the fact that 95

The American Historical Review, 1991