Disorders of Personality: Introducing a DSM / ICD Spectrum from Normal to Abnormal

Now in its Third Edition, this book clarifies the distinctions between the vast array of personality disorders and helps clinicians make accurate diagnoses. It has been thoroughly updated to incorporate the changes in the forthcoming DSM-5. Using the classification scheme he pioneered, Dr. Millon guides clinicians through the intricate maze of personality disorders, with special attention to changes in their conceptualization over the last decade. Extensive new research is included, as well as the incorporation of over 50 new illustrative and therapeutically detailed cases. This is every mental health professional's essential volume to fully understanding personality.

From the Author: Does Psychiatry Itself Have a Personality Problem?

From early in the 20th century, Freud, Adler and Jung wrangled over whose treatment approach was best. Now, today, there are literally dozens of therapies, each vying for its preeminence, shifting yearly in their “popularity”, from psychodynamic to pharmaceuticals, to behavioral, to cognitive, to family, and who knows what else?

No less troubling is psychiatry’s inability to maintain a decent measure of clarity or stability in its diagnostic Bible, the DSM, now undergoing its fifth revision in recent decades, and stirring up powerful controversies as it presses for further radical changes since the innovative DSM-III and DSM-IV. What are being proposed is the recasting or dropping of such classical syndromes as the paranoid, the narcissistic, the schizoid and the histrionic (hysterical) personality, while proposing the ascendance of recent types such as the schizotypal, avoidant and borderline. Are these changes a scientifically based index of “survival of the fittest” or another fad of the times, to be recast again in the DSM-6?

It appears that the psychiatric profession can’t make up its own mind about what disorders exist and how best to treat them. If they were a patient, they would likely be “diagnosed” with the “borderline personality” label, a disorder noted for its identity confusion, instability, impulsive mood changes, periodic feelings of emptiness, and self-injurious behaviors. Chaos does seem to reign in the consulting room, but who has the disorder, the doctor or the patient?