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Person Centered Psychiatry pp 427–444Cite as

Personality Disorders

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Abstract

The assessment of personality and its disorders is a core feature of person-centered medicine (PCM), because it allows the promotion of health by stimulating greater self-awareness and thereby promoting the integration of all aspects of a person’s life. Growth in self-awareness leads to greater flexibility and resilience in the individual and thus is at the root of sustainable well-being. Personality disorder (PD) is the primary psychiatric illness observed in most patients with psychosocial complaints, and such patients constitute the majority of patients seeking treatment in primary care. Reliable diagnosis of PD can be made in routine clinical practice by brief assessment of two essential features of a person’s character—low self-directedness and low cooperativeness—that indicate reduced ability to work and to get along with other people. Subtypes can be distinguished in terms of configurations of temperament traits measuring a person’s emotional drives for immediate gratification. Improved self-regulation through development of character strengths, virtues, and greater plasticity can promote greater physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being even in cases of severe PD. The strengths and weaknesses of both DSM and ICD classifications are discussed in relation to a scientifically grounded psychobiological model that allows a coherent systematic approach to rating the level of a person’s healthy character strengths and the qualitative diagnostic features of their styles of emotional expression and mental self-government.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid, Campus, Box 8134, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

    C. Robert Cloninger MD, PhD & Dragan M. Svrakic MD, PhD

  2. Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Institute of Mental Health, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

    Dusica Lecic-Tosevski MD, PhD

  3. Professor of Psychiatry, Universidad de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina

    Nestor Koldobsky MD

  4. Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Western Brittany, Brest, France

    Michel Botbol MD

  5. Clinical Researcher and Instructor of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Nigel C. Lester MD

  6. Professor of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Dragan M. Svrakic MD, PhD

Authors
  1. C. Robert Cloninger MD, PhD
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  2. Dragan M. Svrakic MD, PhD
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  3. Nigel C. Lester MD
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  4. Dusica Lecic-Tosevski MD, PhD
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  5. Nestor Koldobsky MD
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  6. Michel Botbol MD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. Robert Cloninger MD, PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Psychiatry, New York University Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA

    Juan E. Mezzich

  2. Laboratory Ethics, Professionalism, University of Western Brittany, Bohars, France

    Michel Botbol

  3. Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    George N. Christodoulou

  4. Department of Psychiatry, WASHINGTON UNIV SCH MED Department of Psychiatry, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA

    C. Robert Cloninger

  5. Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

    Ihsan M. Salloum

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Cloninger, C.R., Svrakic, D.M., Lester, N.C., Lecic-Tosevski, D., Koldobsky, N., Botbol, M. (2016). Personality Disorders. In: Mezzich, J., Botbol, M., Christodoulou, G., Cloninger, C., Salloum, I. (eds) Person Centered Psychiatry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39724-5_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39724-5_31

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39722-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39724-5

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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