Feed the wolf as you will;
he will always look to the forest.

Personality Disorders

What is a personality disorder?

Well, the official definition says:
An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectation of the individual's culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment. [from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, 1994, commonly referred to as DSM-IV, of the American Psychiatric Association. European countries use the diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization.]

Someone with a personality disorder accepts no responsibility for the problem or their own actions and believes the solution lies in forcing others to do what they think is necessary. One more thing, personality disorders are incurable by medical and psychiatric means. The only hope is that the person suddenly looks around and says, "Maybe I need to change some of my own behaviors." But the instances of that actually happening are very rare.

A therapist gave me a guideline for determining if someone had a personality disorder since I grew up with a parent who had one and am very suspectible to them. As he put it:

A regular person when they seek therapy says, "Can you help me? I have had this happen to me and I want to be able to know what *I* need to do to get over it and get on with my life."

Someone with a personality disorder says, "Everybody else in this world is a total anus! (His words, not mine.) How can I make *them* get their act together and do what they're suppose to."

A good layman's description of the several types of personality disorders can be found at this site: People to Avoid.

My own personal experiences with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder can be found in my journal.