Rep36 Understanding Personality Disorder

part of a continuum of personality functioning,
rather than as discrete abnormalities. 
We also emphasise that personality disorders
originate in complex interactions of biological,
familial, and social influences. Better
understanding of these dysfunctions and how
they might be ameliorated must therefore come
from interdisciplinary collaboration and not
simply the perspective of any single discipline.
Nevertheless, we argue that psychological
approaches have a major contribution to make
because of the longstanding interest of
psychology in personality and in psychological
methods of intervention in human problems.
We acknowledge that there has never been a
single psychological perspective on personality.
For example, there have always been debates
about whether the study of personality should
focus on the unique characteristics of individuals
or on those features that are shared in varying
degrees by many people. Clinical practitioners
always work with unique individuals, but
generally recognise that it is impossible to
understand uniqueness without the language of
what is shared. Different theoretical approaches
have also brought their own perspective on
human personality, leading to disagreements
about the most important aspects to study and
understand. Some psychologists and other social
scientists have even argued that personality is not
an intrinsic characteristic of people, but rather
exists only in the mind of the beholder. 
These debates continue, but we can only
touch on these wider issues here. In our view,
personality refers to real human characteristics
and includes some of the important factors that
influence human behaviour in many contexts. In
presenting a psychological viewpoint, we focus
on those psychological approaches that seem
promising in promoting our understanding of
personality disorder. We do not attempt a
synthesis of current approaches, but hope that
we have highlighted where progress has been
made and how this provides a foundation for
further developments in helping people with
these disabling problems.