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 DSMTM 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. SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION Edited by Charles G. Costello This groundbreaking book advances our understanding of depression by directing focus away from the global syndrome of depression and onto the individual symptoms it comprises. Some of the field's foremost researchers and clinicians share their findings and offer insights into all major symptoms of depression, including dysphoria, anhedonia, sleeping problems, hopelessness, suicide attempts, social dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, eating problems, and more. Each symptom is discussed using a common format: definition, measurement, frequency of occurrence, a review of clinical and experimental findings that have led to the current theories of the causes of the symptom, its functional relationship to other symptoms of depression, and implications for clinical practice. 1993 (0-471-54304-7) 322 pp. SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA Edited by Charles G. Costello This volume offers readers an opportunity to step back from unwieldy clinical categories of syndromes and redirect their attention onto the symptoms that comprise those syndromes. Leading clinicians and researchers in the field review the current state of knowledge about the major symptoms common to schizophrenic disorders and share their insights into thinking disorders, hallucinations, delusions, disorders of affect, ambivalence, social withdrawal, anhedonia, psychomotor abnormalities, and more. Symptoms are treated in individual chapters in order of: definition, measurement, frequency, a review of clinical and experimental findings that