L33 Psych 354 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Antisocial Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Document Summary
Humans are social organisms: we form social alliances for many purposes, such as raising families, doing our jobs and living in a community, we compete with others. In some cases, we have to protect ourselves from others. Personality -enduring patterns of thinking and behavior that define the person and distinguish him or her from other people, including: ways of expressing emotion, patterns of thinking about ourselves and other people. Dividing line between eccentricity and personality is difficult to define. The distinctions among healthy traits, eccentricity and personality pathology depend on the person"s ability to adapt to the demands of different situations: variety and flexibility in interpersonal behavior are very helpful. People with personality disorders can make their own social problems worse (often unwittingly) by persistently responding in ways that do not suit the social challenges they face. All of the personality disorders are based on exaggerated personality traits that are frequently disturbing or annoying to other people.
