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Cultural Contribution to Personality Disorders in China

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Abstract

Each culture with its specific history, dimensions, values, and practices influences, gears the individual and family or group in unique ways. Culture, not only shapes different dimensions of life, but also has a plastic effect on incidence, symptoms and types of personality disorders, which has been reflected in a novel written more than 300 years ago (Chapter “Narrations of Personality Disorders in A Dream of Red Mansions”), and might be reflected by other factors. In this chapter, we further discussed cultural factors in association with personality disorders, according to the clinical prevalence, characteristics and other aspects of these disorders. We have emphasized on the evidence supporting the association between Chinese culture and personality disorders. From literature, there are unique components of Chinese culture contributing to the cognition, behavior and emotion malfunctions in different types of personality disorder. However, it might be tested whether the Chinese culture influences normal personality structures in contemporary Chinese society, by studying the Chinese adjective descriptors of personality (see Chapter “Personality Traits in Contemporary China: A Lexical Approach”).

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Wang, J., Wang, W. (2019). Cultural Contribution to Personality Disorders in China. In: Wang, W. (eds) Chinese Perspectives on Cultural Psychiatry . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3537-2_5

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