ABSTRACT
Nitpicking perfectionists (• DSM [American Psychiatric Association]: “obsessivecompulsive personality”) Clinging vines (• DSM: “dependent personality”) Drama queens (• DSM: “histrionic personality”) Passive women (wallowers)• Passive men (Casper Milquetoast)• Seducers• Obnoxious people• Class clowns (practical jokers) (• character perversion) Womanizers (male sexual predators)• Gold diggers (female predators)• Greedy people• Sadists and masochists (oen together)• Impulsive people (overeating, hypersexuality, temper tantrums)• Introverts (• DSM: “avoidant personality”) Extroverts (• DSM: “histrionic personality”) Snobs• Bullies• Spineless worms• Suck-ups (sycophantism)• Ambitious go-getters (“Type A”)• Workaholics• Slobs• Procrastinators and the chronically late• Combinations of the above•
Any of the above may be superimposed on a decit pattern. For example, nitpicking perfectionists (obsessionals) may also have decits in integration, abstraction, and the relationship to reality. People with these added decits tend to be the most rigid, irrational, and dicult to diagnose. In addition, a few personality disorders are actually caused primarily by decits in functions. ese include:
Hermits (• DSM: “schizoid personality”)—Decit in object relations Narcissists (womanizers and gold diggers) (• DSM: “narcissistic personality”)—Deficit in self-image and anxiety about closeness Paranoids (• DSM: “paranoid personality”)—Decits in relation to reality (+ projection) Connivers and liars (• DSM: “antisocial personality”)—Decits in superego Fakers (“as if”• personality or “inauthentic”)—Decits in self-image and superego
In this section, we will address the causes of the conict-based disturbances and leave out, for the moment, the issue of emotional problems based on mixtures of conicts and decits.
