Coming soon - Get a detailed view of why an account is flagged as spam!
view details

This post has been de-listed

It is no longer included in search results and normal feeds (front page, hot posts, subreddit posts, etc). It remains visible only via the author's post history.

18
Why are personality disorders studied separately from from personality psychology in general?
Post Flair (click to view more posts with a particular flair)
Post Body

Wouldn't it make sense to study both normal and pathological personality together from the same framework?

While regular personality psychology is all about stuff like Big 5, HEXACO, or temperament, character, or in past Freudian ideas like ego, superego, id, etc... the science of personality disorders seems to come from a completely different framework. It typically just lists symptoms and classifies disorders without relating any of that to any general theories of personality.

I mean, in medicine, if you know that normal blood pressure is around 120/80, it's easy to see that 160/110 is hypertension. You compare abnormal to normal. You look at both from the same framework.

Why is this not the case in psychology?

The answer that psychology deals with normal psyche and psychiatry with mental illness is not satisfactory to me. I think that psychology as a science that studies mind should be able to understand both normal and pathological functioning of mind. From scientific point of view the fact that psychologists don't prescribe drugs is irrelevant. They still treat mental illnesses as therapists. And so I think it would be better if there was a more integrating personality theory that covers both normal and abnormal personality, and explains abnormalities in terms of deviations from normal.

Author
Account Strength
100%
Account Age
5 years
Verified Email
Yes
Verified Flair
No
Total Karma
19,768
Link Karma
11,184
Comment Karma
8,311
Profile updated: 3 days ago

Subreddit

Post Details

We try to extract some basic information from the post title. This is not always successful or accurate, please use your best judgement and compare these values to the post title and body for confirmation.
Posted
5 months ago