ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine some of the personality disorder types and explore how love and loss are experienced by such people, in order to enhance people understanding of the centrality of love and loss in human life. Personality type is determined by a combination of inborn temperaments, the quality of attachment relationships and later life events. Each personality type is distinguished by an associated combination of defence mechanisms. The classical personality types, which are featured in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV, come from a long line of psychiatric literature dating back more than 100 years. Some basic personality types were identified in Ancient Greece, the melancholic, the sanguine, the choleric, and the phlegmatic. The borderline personality has become a cause celebre within the psychiatric field. Patients with these personality traits represent an extremely high percentage of individuals who seek help through psychiatric outpatient or inpatient services.
