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Personality "styles": the healthy version of each personality disorder

QuietMagic January 24th, 2022

I came across something interesting that I wanted to share, which is the idea of personality "styles". This concept comes from the work of Len Sperry, who is one of the leading experts on personality disorders.

The idea is that personality exists on a continuum. For each personality "disorder", there is a corresponding personality "style" that represents a healthier, more adaptive version of that same set of tendencies that is worth aiming towards.

Here is what I appreciate about this:

  • It doesn't unrealistically expect people to become something the opposite of who they naturally are.
  • It doesn't impose a "one-size-fits-all" standard for what it means to live in a healthy or happy way.

Personality disorders are often described in terms of diagnostic criteria that represent different "maladaptive" tendencies. Below are charts that show for each tendency what the healthy or "adaptive" version of that tendency looks like.

These charts come from the 3rd edition of Len Sperry's Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-5 Personality Disorders. Special thanks to @RarelyCharlie for finding and providing them HERE.

Here are links if you would like to access the post for a specific personality disorder:

Borderline Personality Disorder
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Histrionic Personality Disorder
Dependent Personality Disorder
Schizoid Personality Disorder
Antisocial Personality Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
Paranoid Personality Disorder
Avoidant Personality Disorder
Schizotypal Personality Disorder

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RarelyCharlie January 27th, 2022

@QuietMagic I like the idea of this, but I think some of the details are a little odd.

The idea that there's a continuum is certainly a useful one. Some would say there are two continua.

One is a continuum of severity, in that some people's symptoms are mild and other people's symptoms are severe. I think this is the continuum referred to in the book: "a continuum from order to disorder – from function to dysfunction."

The other is a continuum of personality traits, in the sense that the boundaries between the ten personality disorders, and indeed between personality disorders and other disorders, are often very fuzzy. A person might have some symptoms from one disorder and some symptoms from another. DSM-5 acknowledges this way of thinking about personality disorders in its section on Emerging Measures and Models.

So all that is good. It's when looking into the detail that things get a little weird, in my opinion.

The first weird thing I noticed is that in the table for Borderline Personality Disorder there are only six traits listed. DSM-5 and the older DSM-IV-TR both list nine (and the book referred to as the source lists all nine on a previous page).

Next I noticed that some of the descriptions in the Optimal Functioning column don't seem to be optimal at all. For example, in the table for Borderline Personality Disorder the first one is:

"The person tends to experience passionate, focused attachments in all relationships."

All? Really? I think that's far from optimal, and very probably impossible. Many of the other "Optimal Functioning" descriptions also seem to be unrealistic. To understand this better, I looked at the book itself, Understanding Personality Style and Disorder for Pastoral Counseling, by Robert Tippie.

That book credits a different book for the tables of so-called "optimal functioning": Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-IV-TR Personality Disorders (Second Edition, 2013) by Len Sperry.

Tippie changed Sperry's table headings from "Personality Style" to "Optimal Functioning". Sperry didn't claim the styles were necessarily optimal. He described the continuum in terms of disordered, adequate and optimal functioning, but Tippie dropped the "adequate" part.

Sperry then corrected the tables in his next edition: Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatt of DSM-5 Personality Disorders (Third Edition, 2016).

In the later edition the table for Borderline Personality now lists all nine traits. The first column heading is still Personality Style, and the first of those is now:

"Maintenance of stable interpersonal relationships in which negative and positive perceptions of another are integrated rather than polarized."

I think that is much more accurate and realistic.

For anyone interested, I captured all ten tables from the third edition: Personality Styles.

Charlie

3 replies
QuietMagic OP January 28th, 2022

@RarelyCharlie

Oh! Thank you for researching that, going so far as to find the original book source for the .pdf's I linked, comparing them against the Sperry source, and identifying those discrepancies (e.g. "personality style" column got renamed to "optimal functioning").

Looks like I need to take some time to go through the posts in this thread (and also possibly some resource threads elsewhere in the forum where I've referenced this thread) and make changes.

I assume you wouldn't have an issue with me pulling screenshots from the .pdf file you've linked?

Thanks again.

2 replies
RarelyCharlie January 28th, 2022

@QuietMagic You're right, I wouldn't have any issue with that ;)

Charlie

1 reply
QuietMagic OP January 28th, 2022

@RarelyCharlie

Thanks, have finished updating this thread. Feel free to let me know if you see any issues.

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