Wounded Personalities ― A Practical Guide to Understanding Personality Disorders

This book focuses on an area in abnormal psychology known as “personality disorders.” In both psychology and psychiatry, personality disorders are a special kind of mental health condition. The mental health conditions which most people are familiar with; things such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are what are referred to as ego-dystonic disorders meaning “something which is inconsistent with oneself.” With ego-dystonic disorders, a person feels the discomfort and realizes that something is wrong. That is much different from personality disorders, which are ego-syntonic. Ego-syntonic refers to “a condition or state of being that is consistent with oneself.” In other words, the individual generally does not feel as if anything is wrong with them. This is primarily true because our personalities have been with us our entire lives and they are all that we know. Another feature of personality disorders is that they generally will not respond to treatment. This is not to say that some improvements cannot be made in motivated courageous individuals but these improvements tend to be marginal and they can take a long time to achieveThis book is intended to help the nonprofessional understand the complexities of several major personality disorders. It is not meant to be a diagnostic tool; it is rather a guide to help individuals gain an understanding of the origin and symptoms of several of the most debilitating personality disorders.