ABSTRACT
What are personality disorders? Personality refers to individual differences in usual tendencies to think, feel, and behave in certain ways. For example, people reliably differ in their preferences and tendencies to seek social stimulation and excitement, in emotional vulnerability and expressiveness, in orderliness, etc. ± all part of normal personality variation. Abnormal personality or personality pathology refers to maladaptive traits that are overly rigid and/or extreme. Constellations of such pathologically ampli®ed personality traits may constitute formal personality disorders (Strack & Lorr, 1997). A formal personality disorder then, can be de®ned as a chronic psychiatric disorder with onset in adolescence continuing into adulthood, characterized by pathological personality traits that lead to a disruption in the development and maintenance of mutual interpersonal relationships, to an extent that this in turn leads to prolonged subjective distress of self and/or others.
