Contemporary Perspectives on Personality Disorders
created
- Harry Stack Sullivan: father of interpersonal perspective
- Reaction to Freud, pathology private
- Personality: recurrent set of interpersonal situations with characterize person’s life
- Timothy Leary levels of personality:
1) Public Communication: what is observable and objective in interpersonal behavior
2) Conscious Description: expressed through the verbal content of statements made about self or
others
3) Private Symbolization: concerned w/ preconscious and unconscious attributions
a) Express through “projective indirect fantasy materials”
4) Unexpress Unconscious: issues that are censored from consciousness and “systematically and
compulsively avoided the subject at all other levels of personality… and are conspicuous by their
inflexible absence”
5) Values: expressed not only in the ego ideal, but in the standards through which self and others are
judged
- Timothy Leary’s Interpersonal Circumplex:
- “Interpersonal circle”
- Differs from DSM’s categorical rep of discrete disorders
- Dependent Personality Disorder: picture themselves as helpless, attach themselves to a stronger
figure who will provide resources for survival & happiness
- Self-view: needy, weak, helpless, incompetent
- View of others: strong “caretaker” in idealized way
- Need other people in order to survive
Extra credit question: which personality disorder do you think Ian has
Avoidant Personality Disorder
- Students in class who seem to earnestly desire participation in discussions
- Seems awkward and self-conscious on those rare occasions when they speak a few words
- Someone at a party who shows up early and stays late…
- This person may have one or two trusted friends
- Few others pass their strict tests of uncritical support and acceptance rto gain access to
their private circles
- This person is not content w/ this secret, isolated way of life
, - Pain from loneliness and seclusion hurts them to the core of their existence
- They’d rather be alone than make themselves vulnerable to the “inevitable” social
humiliation
- Invisible away from the “harsh, but deserved criticism from others”
- May resist any life change that may bring them into the public eye
- May wish deeply for love, genuine intimacy, and greater life enjoyment or satisfaction
- Souls are seen as so disgraced that they must withdraw into a private world of
shame
- Often has an abiding faith in their own defectiveness
- Most of us are insecure about something
- These people’s insecurities constitute their perceived reality
- Thickness of outer shell doesn’t make it less fragile
- Shows restraint within intimate relationships b/c of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed
- Even when hypersensitivity is overcome long enough to let someone in,
imagined inadequacies result in a fear to be oneself
- If someone does like the person, it’s only because they had the wisdom to never show
their true self
- Is inhibited in new interpersonal situations b/c of feelings of inadequacy
- The key is limiting exposure: by revealing little they leave little to be attacked
- Is unusually reluctant to take personal risks or to engage in any new activities b/c they
may prove embarrassing
- Results in stagnation
- Avoidant personalities refuse to take risks that might leave them open to
public view
Cognitive Conceptualization
- Core beliefs:
- As children, they may have had a significant person (parent, teacher, sibling, peer) who
was highly critical and rejecting of them
Dependent Personality Disorder
- Individuals are
- Caring to a fault
- Allow others’ well-being to come first no matter what the cost may be to
themselves or their identity
- Live their lives through others and for others
- When people they care for are happy, they are happy
- Tend to assume a more passive role in relationships
- Prefer harmony in relationships
- Have many characteristics that are prized within our culture
- Being happy when loved ones are happy
- Making sacrifices for the good of others
created
- Harry Stack Sullivan: father of interpersonal perspective
- Reaction to Freud, pathology private
- Personality: recurrent set of interpersonal situations with characterize person’s life
- Timothy Leary levels of personality:
1) Public Communication: what is observable and objective in interpersonal behavior
2) Conscious Description: expressed through the verbal content of statements made about self or
others
3) Private Symbolization: concerned w/ preconscious and unconscious attributions
a) Express through “projective indirect fantasy materials”
4) Unexpress Unconscious: issues that are censored from consciousness and “systematically and
compulsively avoided the subject at all other levels of personality… and are conspicuous by their
inflexible absence”
5) Values: expressed not only in the ego ideal, but in the standards through which self and others are
judged
- Timothy Leary’s Interpersonal Circumplex:
- “Interpersonal circle”
- Differs from DSM’s categorical rep of discrete disorders
- Dependent Personality Disorder: picture themselves as helpless, attach themselves to a stronger
figure who will provide resources for survival & happiness
- Self-view: needy, weak, helpless, incompetent
- View of others: strong “caretaker” in idealized way
- Need other people in order to survive
Extra credit question: which personality disorder do you think Ian has
Avoidant Personality Disorder
- Students in class who seem to earnestly desire participation in discussions
- Seems awkward and self-conscious on those rare occasions when they speak a few words
- Someone at a party who shows up early and stays late…
- This person may have one or two trusted friends
- Few others pass their strict tests of uncritical support and acceptance rto gain access to
their private circles
- This person is not content w/ this secret, isolated way of life
, - Pain from loneliness and seclusion hurts them to the core of their existence
- They’d rather be alone than make themselves vulnerable to the “inevitable” social
humiliation
- Invisible away from the “harsh, but deserved criticism from others”
- May resist any life change that may bring them into the public eye
- May wish deeply for love, genuine intimacy, and greater life enjoyment or satisfaction
- Souls are seen as so disgraced that they must withdraw into a private world of
shame
- Often has an abiding faith in their own defectiveness
- Most of us are insecure about something
- These people’s insecurities constitute their perceived reality
- Thickness of outer shell doesn’t make it less fragile
- Shows restraint within intimate relationships b/c of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed
- Even when hypersensitivity is overcome long enough to let someone in,
imagined inadequacies result in a fear to be oneself
- If someone does like the person, it’s only because they had the wisdom to never show
their true self
- Is inhibited in new interpersonal situations b/c of feelings of inadequacy
- The key is limiting exposure: by revealing little they leave little to be attacked
- Is unusually reluctant to take personal risks or to engage in any new activities b/c they
may prove embarrassing
- Results in stagnation
- Avoidant personalities refuse to take risks that might leave them open to
public view
Cognitive Conceptualization
- Core beliefs:
- As children, they may have had a significant person (parent, teacher, sibling, peer) who
was highly critical and rejecting of them
Dependent Personality Disorder
- Individuals are
- Caring to a fault
- Allow others’ well-being to come first no matter what the cost may be to
themselves or their identity
- Live their lives through others and for others
- When people they care for are happy, they are happy
- Tend to assume a more passive role in relationships
- Prefer harmony in relationships
- Have many characteristics that are prized within our culture
- Being happy when loved ones are happy
- Making sacrifices for the good of others
