A Concise Guide to Personality Disorders

Clinicians tend to try to avoid treating people with personality disorders, as they present some serious difficulties. A major problem is that of definition. We, all of us, have personality traits which differ in varying degrees from the “normal” or “average” and which inevitably grate on other people or cause us personal difficulties when interacting with other people. This is all part of being human. The decision as to where to draw the dividing line between, say, being a rather selfish person and being someone with antisocial personality disorder has to be fairly arbitrary. The diagnostic criteria in the American...