Personality Disorders Flashcards
personality disorders =
enduring subjective experiences and behavior that deviate from normal standards, are rigidly pervasive, have an onset in adolescence/early adulthood, stable through time and lead to unhappiness and impairment
Common defense mechanisms
- Mature
- Immature
- Functional
- Dysfunctional
- neurotic
Mature defense mechanisms =
- Altruism: deriving personal satisfaction from helping others
- Anticipation: planning for future stress with preparation
- Humor: lessening negative situations with laughter
- Sublimination = transforming negative instinct into positive
Neurotic defense mechanisms
- Displacement: shifting aggressive impulses onto less threatening target
- Intellectualization: focusing on the intellectual rather than anxiety producing emotional aspects of the situation
- Rationalization: convincing oneself they did nothing wrong
- Repression: unconsciously putting unacceptable thoughts or memories out of mind
Immature defense mechs
- Passive aggression: aggression towards others is expressed passively or indirectly; turn their anger against themselves
- Denial: refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening
- Splitting: seeing oneself or others as either all good or all bad
- Projection: denial of ones own deficiency and then perceiving that deficiency on others
- Projection identification: the object of the projection begins to act in a way to confirm the projectors feelings
Other defense mechs from book:
- Fantasy: to find solace create imaginary lives, seem aloof
- Dissociation: replacing unpleasant affects with pleasant ones; seen as dramatically or emotionally shallow
Cluster A PD’s
- aka weird: familial associations with psychotic disorders
1) Paranoid
2) Schizoid
3) Schizotypal
Cluster B PDs
- wild = familial associations with mood disorders
1) Borderline PD
2) Histrionic
3) Narcissitic
4) Antisocial
Cluster C PDs
- worried - familial association with anxiety disorder
1) Avoidant
2) Obsessive Compulsive
3) Dependent
Paranoid PD
- a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others
- suspects others are exploiting or harming them
- preoccupied with unjustified doubts about loyalty
- reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that info will be used against them
- reads hidden threatening meanings into benign things
- persistently bears grudges
- perceives attacks on his/her character or reputation that are not apparent to others
- Recurrent suspicion regarding infidelity of partner
Paranoid PD tx
- psychotherapy
- meds to tx agitation and anxiety: diazapam, antipsychs (haloperidol)
Schizoid PD
- pervasive pattern of social withdrawal and restricted range of expression and emotions with at least 4 of following:
- neither desire nor enjoys close relationships
- almost always chooses solitary activities
- little interest in sexual experiences with another person
- takes pleasure in few, if any activities
- lacks close friends, other than first degree relatives
- appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
- emotional coldness, detachment or flattened affect
Schizoid PD tx
- psychotherapy
- meds: antipsychs, antidepressants, psychostimulants
Schizotypal PD
- pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with and reduced capacity for close rltnshps, as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, indicated by at least 5 of the following:
- Ideas of reference
- odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norma
- unusual perceptual experiences including bodily illusions
- odd thinking or speech
- suspicious or paranoid ideation
- inappropriate or constricted affect
- behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
- lack of close friends other than relatives
- excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than neg judgments about self
Schizotypal PD tx
-low dose anti psychs