Personality Characteristics of the Personality Disordered

Personality Characteristics of the Personality Disordered

People with disordered personalities are much more likely than most to practice substance abuse, attempt suicide, and suffer from major anxiety and depressive disorders. They are also more difficult to treat for mental disorders, and their chances of relapse are greater. Clearly then, it is essential that mental health professionals be able to identify and cope with personality disorders in their patients. Unfortunately, the task of accurately assessing disordered personalities based solely on nebulous, polythetic categories such as those provided in the DSM is akin to that of the three blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. What is needed is a new approach to conceptualizing personality disorders based on observable behaviors rather than inferential nosologies. In this book, Charles G. Costello lays the foundations for just such an approach.

Reculer pour mieux sauter―to retreat so as to better leap ahead―is the phrase Dr. Costello uses to articulate the spirit in which this book was conceived. Stated more practically, his goal in presenting this volume is to afford psychotherapists an opportunity to step back from questionable clinical categories and redirect their attention onto the individual personality traits commonly associated with personality disorders―to more clearly define them, their origins, and their functional relationships―and in so doing, open up new avenues for research and provide clinicians with a surer conceptual footing upon which to base diagnoses and devise treatment strategies.

To achieve that end, Dr. Costello invited a group of leading researchers and clinicians in the field to share their understanding of the current state of knowledge about personality disorders. Over the course of eleven chapters, each devoted to a separate personality characteristic, these experts review the latest research data and offer their professional insights into the major personality characteristics of the personality disordered, including aggressiveness, anxiousness, emotional instability, impulsiveness, dependency, narcissism, detachment, paranoia, obsessiveness, and sensation-seeking.

Personality Characteristics of the Personality Disordered is a valuable resource for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and all mental health practitioners, as well as personality theorists and researchers.

CHARLES G. COSTELLO, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of Psychology,University of Calgary. Dr. Costello attended Manchester University,Durham University, and London University, from which he receivedhis doctorate in psychology in 1960.
In 1989, he was awarded The Psychologists' Association of Alberta President's Award for Exceptional Contributions to the Discipline of Psychology in Alberta. A prolific writer, he is the author of more than 90 published articles on a wide range of topics in psychology. His other books include Symptoms of Psychopathology, Symptoms of Depression, Symptoms of Schizophrenia, Psychology forPsychiatrists (all from Wiley), and N=1: Experimental Investigationof the Individual Case (with P. O. Davidson).