ABSTRACT
Personality disorders provide the most obvious link between the two halves of this book and the clearest example of the dimensionality between normal and abnormal. Personality disorders represent aberrations of behaviour which, superficially at least, seem to be continuous with features that in the normal range describe healthy individuality. In other words, they seem for the most part to be exaggerations of normal personality or temperamental variation. The directness of this association contrasts somewhat with the dimensionality found within the disorders to be discussed in later chapters. In those cases personality differences act more as underlying vulnerabilities to symptom-based illnesses and, where they play a part in aetiology, do so by interacting with other, precipitating factors. The connection to personality disposition is therefore more concealed than it appears to be in the personality disorders, where causation and natural individuality coincide to a greater degree. Later in the chapter we shall see that the picture is not quite as simple as that, but for the moment it suffices to emphasize the distinction between personality disorders and other forms of abnormality.
