ABSTRACT
In the first case of Parkinson’s disease ever described, James Parkinson com-
mented in 1817 that this was a patient who, “. . . had industriously followed
the business of a gardener, leading a life of remarkable temperance and
sobriety.”1 This thought was emphasized in 1913 by Carl Camp, a well
known neurologist, writing in Modern Treatment of Nervous and Mental Dis-
eases who noted, “It would seem that paralysis agitans affected mostly those
persons whose lives had been devoted to hard work. . . . The people who take
their work to bed with them and who never come under the inhibiting influ-
ences of tobacco or alcohol are the kind that are most frequently affected. In
this respect, the disease may be almost regarded as a badge of respectable
Since that time, many reports have examined the association between
personality or behavioral traits and Parkinson’s disease (PD). While the
concept remains controversial, most of these reports suggest that patients
who develop PD generally show a tendency towards a premorbid personality
profile of industriousness, inflexibility, punctuality, cautiousness and lack of
novelty seeking, and that these traits persist after the onset of the motor
illness. Such a proposition, necessarily based on retrospective data and
elusive concepts of personality, is, of course, hard to prove. In this chapter, I
will review the efforts that have been made to identify personality traits asso-
ciated with PD, and briefly discuss the importance of these issues for clinical
care.
