Common Features of Personality Disorders, Essays (university) of Psychology

Download Common Features of Personality Disorders and more Essays (university) Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Common Features of Personality Disorders Subject: Psychology Paper 3 Psychology is more a kind than a science. There’s no "Theory of Everything" from which one can derive all psychological state phenomena and make falsifiable predictions. Still, as far as personality disorders are concerned, it's easy to discern common features. Most personality disorders share a group of symptoms (as reported by the patient) and signs (as observed by the psychological state practitioner). Patients affected by personality disorders have this stuff in common: They are persistent, relentless, stubborn, and insistent (except those affected by the Schizoid or the Avoidant Personality Disorders). They feel entitled to - and vociferously demand - preferential treatment and privileged access to resources and personnel. They often complain about multiple symptoms. They become involved in "power plays" authoritatively figures (such as physicians, therapists, nurses, social workers, bosses, and bureaucrats) and infrequently obey instructions or observe rules of conduct and procedure. They hold themselves to be superior to others or, at the very least, unique. Many personality disorders involve an inflated self-perception and grandiosity. Such subjects are incapable of empathy (the ability to understand and respect the requirements and needs of other people). In therapy or medical treatment, they alienate the physician or therapist by treating her as inferior to them. Patients with personality disorders are self-centred, self-preoccupied, repetitive, and, thus, boring. Subjects with personality disorders seek to control and exploit others. They trust nobody and have a diminished capacity to like or intimately share because they are doing not trust or love themselves. They’re socially maladaptive and emotionally unstable. No one knows whether personality disorders are the tragic outcomes of nature or the sad follow-up to a scarcity of nurture by the patient's environment. Generally speaking, though, most personality disorders start call at childhood and early adolescence as mere problems in personal development. Exacerbated by repeated abuse and rejection, they then become full-fledged dysfunctions. Personality disorders are rigid and enduring patterns of traits, emotions, and cognitions. In other words, they rarely "evolve" and are stable and all-pervasive, not episodic. By ‘all-pervasive", I mean to mention that they affect every area within the patient's life: his career, his interpersonal relationships, his social functioning. Personality disorders cause unhappiness and are usually comorbid with mood and anxiety disorders. Most patients are ego-dystonic (except narcissists and psychopaths). They dislike and resent who they’re, how they behave, and therefore the pernicious and destructive effects they need on their nearest and dearest. Still, personality disorders are defence mechanisms obvious. Thus, few patients with personality disorders are truly self-aware or capable of life transforming introspective insights.