ABSTRACT

Personality can be defined as enduring patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving and relating to the environment and oneself in a consistent manner and in various social contexts. When specific traits such as orderliness, rigidity, thriftiness, and emotional construction cluster together they can be referred to as a personality style. For instance, the four traits noted above would be labelled the obsessive-compulsive personality style. When these personality styles become inflexible and maladaptive so as to cause significant impairment in occupational or social functioning, or result in great subjective distress, the criteria in DSMIV would cause them to be labelled as personality disorders and assign them Axis II codes. In the example above, the classification would be ObsessiveCompulsive Personality Disorder, 301.40. Whereas everyone exhibits a personality style, not everyone manifests a personality disorder or disorders . Personality disorders indicate the existence of a longstanding, maladaptive pattern of attitudes and behaviors of the way one relates to, perceives, and thinks about the environment and oneself that is of sufficient severity to cause either significant impairment in adaptive functioning or subjective distress. The manifestations of personality disorders are usually recognizable by adolescence and continue throughout most of life. According to DSM-IV, the pattern must be present by early adulthood (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).