Transcript Dissociative Disorders

Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders
Inflexible, maladaptive pattern of thoughts,
emotions, behaviors, and interpersonal
functioning that are stable over time and
across situations, and deviate from the
expectations of the individual’s culture
Personality Disorders
• Personality disorders are evident in up
to 15 percent of the general population
• 10 personality disorders divided into 3
clusters:
– Related to anxiety
– With odd and eccentric behaviors
– With dramatic or impulsive behaviors
Personality Disorders
Related to Anxiety
Avoidant Personality Disorder
• So sensitive about being rejected that
personal relationships become
difficult
Dependent Personality Disorder
• Behave in clingy, submissive ways
and displays a strong need to have
others take care of them
Obsessive Compulsive
Personality Disorder
• Unreasonable Perfectionism
• Need for personal control, order and
organization
• Does not have full blown obsessions &
compulsions
Personality Disorders
with Odd or Eccentric
Behaviors
Paranoid Personality Disorder
• Pervasive mistrust and suspiciousness of others are the
main characteristic
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Distrustful even of close family and friends
Reluctant to form close relationships
Tend to blame others for their own shortcomings
Pathological jealousy in intimate relationships
Inappropriate outbursts of anger
• About 3 percent of the general population display
this disorder, which occurs more frequently in men
• Not much research on what causes this disorder;
however, it tends to co-occur with schizotypal and
avoidant personality disorders
Schizoid Personality Disorder
• Is detached from social relationships
• Are true hermits, preferring life alone
and avoiding intimate interactions at
all costs
Schizotypal Disorder
• Exhibit the strange behaviors associated
with schizophrenia but without the major
symptoms (delusions, hallucinations)
• Displays odd speech, emotional behaviors,
mannerisms and appearance
• Struggle with relationships
Personality Disorders
with Dramatic or
Impulsive Behaviors
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
• Characterized by instability of interpersonal
relationships, self-image, and emotions, and
marked impulsivity & self-destructive
behaviors
• Intense fear of abandonment and emptiness
• Possible history of childhood physical,
emotional, or sexual abuse
• 75% of diagnosed cases are women
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.
• 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.
• 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 Mind of the Psychopath
Dr. Robert Hare describes his EEG studies and later SPECT (single
photon emission computerized tomography) studies on language
processing by psychopathic persons, and reflects on what these results
reveal about psychopathy. (7:13)
Click HERE to view or
on the box to the right.
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.)
The Mind of the Psychopath:
Questions
1.
Summarize the differences in results for normal and
psychopathic subjects in the SPECT study and the conclusions
drawn by Hare.
2.
What other findings does Hare describe on the informationprocessing capabilities of psychopathic persons?
3.
What do these studies reveal about the causes of
psychopathy?
Cold - Blooded Arousability & Risk of Crime
•Levels of the stress
hormone adrenaline
were measured in
two groups of 13year - old Swedish
boys.
•In both stressful
and nonstressful
situations, those who
were later convicted
of a crime (as 18- to
26- year - olds)
showed relatively low
arousal. (From
Magnusson, 1990.)
Bio psycho social roots of crime
Danish male babies whose backgrounds were marked both by obstetrical
complications and social stresses associated with poverty were twice as
likely to be criminal offenders by ages 20 to 22 as those in either the
biological or social risk groups. (From Raine & others, 1996.)
Gender Bias in Diagnosis
• In this study, case histories
were more likely to be
diagnosed as antisocial
personality if they described
a fictitious male patient and
as histrionic personality if
they described a fictitious
female patient, regardless of
which disorder the case
history was designed to
portray.