I want to end our discussion of psychological disorders by talking about personality disorders. So, personality, as you know, is one way of relating to the world of getting along with other people. But when one's personality becomes sufficiently extreme in certain ways, many psychologists categorize it as a disorder. Some of them are self-explanatory. Paranoid, it's different from paranoid schizophrenic, there are no delusions or hallucinations. But you believe that people are against you, people are plotting against you, you're concerned about yourself. Narcissistic is just what it sounds like and so it's dependent. Histrionic means you blow things out of proportion, you take things too extreme. Borderline refers to an unstable and seemingly difficult person. So, personality disorders are controversial. They're controversial in different ways than a disorder like dissociative identity disorder. Dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder, it's something which people are not certain exists. Everybody agrees that these extremes of personality exist, that there are people you could call a narcissistic or borderline or whatever. But what's not really clear is are they really disorders in an interesting sense, in the same sense as major depressive disorder or schizophrenia, or are they just different sorts of people. Maybe sorts of people who you don't tend to get along with our like but it's not entirely clear that they're disorders in the same sense. Also, they're notably hard to treat and maybe they're hard to treat because they're not disorders people have but just ways people can be. Now, one sort of personality disorder that has received an enormous amount of attention is antisocial personality disorder. You might know this better from the phrase "moral insanity", which is an old phrase but in particular, sociopathy or psychopathy. Now, some psychiatrists and clinicians view psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder as separate disorders but many glom them together. The symptoms are quite similar. If you have it, you're typically male and you're selfish, callous, impulsive and promiscuous. You have a deficit in love, loyalty, guilt or anxiety. You're easily bored, you seek out stimulation. As you can see, these straight, selfishness, callousness, et cetera, are not good traits nor is it good to have a deficit in these things. Psychopaths are not surprisingly more likely to commit crimes and do cruel things to one another, so it's a disorder. If we could snap our fingers, most of us would very much like it to go away. One thing to keep in mind, when people think of these disorders, they often think of these extreme insane killers both in real life and in fiction like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. But in reality, whenever I think of somebody of antisocial personality disorder, I think of James Bond. In particular, James Bond is played by Sean Connery, a ruthless killer, promiscuous, without guilt, et cetera. Many of you may know psychopaths or some debate over whether they're successful psychopaths, whether they are people who have these psychopathic disorders but do very well in the world, often reaching positions of great power.
