Chap. 10: Personality Disorders

Question 1

General Features

Answer 1

• General features:
  
  • Chronic interpersonal difficulties
  • Problems with one’s identity or sense of self
  • Inability to function adequately in society
• Person’s enduring pattern of behavior must be pervasive and inflexible, as well as stable and of long duration
• Cause clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning
• Manifest in at least 2 areas: cognition, affectivity, interpersonal functioning, impulse control

Question 2

Clusters

Answer 2

• Cluster A: Paranoid, Schizoid, & Schizotypal Personality
  Disorders
  
  • Odd or eccentric
  • Unusual behavior ranging from distrust &
    suspiciousness to social detachment
• Cluster B: Histrionic, Narcissistic, Antisocial, &
  Borderline Personality Disorders
  
  • Tendency to be dramatic, emotional, and erratic
• Cluster C: Avoidant, Dependent, & Obsessive-
  Compulsive Personality Disorders
  
  • Features of anxiety and fearfulness

Question 3

Diagnostic Difficulties

Answer 3

• More misdiagnoses here than any other category
• Diagnostic criteria not as sharply defined, not precise
  enough
• Little prospective research

Question 4

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

Answer 4

• Primary goal of treatment is to encourage patients to accept negative affect without engaging in self-destructive or other maladaptive behaviors
  
  • increase coping skills
• Often involves group and individual therapy sessions as well as phone coaching
• Dialectical: a synthesis or integration of opposites

Question 5

Psychopathy & Dimensions

Answer 5

• Psychopathy best understood on 4 dimensions:
  
  • 1) Interpersonal
    
    • Personality style with superficial charm, grandiose
      sense of self-worth, pathological lying,
      manipulation of others
  • 2) Affective
    
    • Traits such as lack of remorse or guilt,
      callousness/lack of empathy, shallow affect, failure
      to accept responsibility for actions
  • 3) Lifestyle
    
    • Need for stimulation, tendency to be easily bored,
      impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of long-term goals
  • 4) Antisocial
    
    • Poor behavior controls, early behavior problems,
      delinquency, criminality

Question 6

Causal Factors in Psychopathy

Answer 6

• Genetic influences
• Low-fear and impaired fear conditioning
• General emotional deficits
• Early parental loss, parental rejection, and
  inconsistency

Question 7

Treatment of Psychopathy

Answer 7

• Efforts should focus on convincing people with
  psychopathy to use their abilities and talents to get their
  needs met in more prosocial ways
• Cognitive-behavior treatment (somewhat effective)
  * Increasing self-control, self-critical thinking, social
  perspective taking
  * Increasing victim awareness
  * Teaching anger management
  * Changing antisocial attitudes
  * Encouraging sobriety from drugs