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• Personality disorders can be studied through the lens of personality theories
• Personality theories examine how an individual develops their personality
• A person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors make up their personality
• This affects the way in which the individual engages with their surroundings
• Psychoanalytic theory:

  • Everyone has unconscious memories, feelings, desires, and thoughts
  • Therapy is the best way to gain access to the mind's suppressed emotions and experiences
• Components of psychoanalytic theory:

  • Id: the source of all psychic energy, aims for instant satisfaction of needs
  • Ego: emerges from the id, ensures impulses can be expressed appropriately
  • Superego: internalized moral principles and values stored from parents and society
• Humanistic theory:

  • Emphasizes individual's potential for personal development, self-actualization, and fulfillment
  • Highlights the significance of one's own goals, self-perception, and subjective experiences
• Trait perspective of personality:

  • Centered on identifying, describing, and measuring specific traits that make up human personality
  • Raymond Cattell identified 16 personality traits to understand individual differences
• Social cognitive theory:

  • Emphasizes observational learning, self-efficacy, situational influences, and cognitive processes
  • Albert Bandura emphasized social learning through observation and self-efficacy beliefs
• Psychological development theory:

  • Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development and identity crisis
  • Focuses on cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and social capacities evolving over a lifespan
• Erikson's stages:

  • Stage 1: Trust Vs. Mistrust (Birth to 18 months)
  • Stage 2: Autonomy vs Shame/Doubt (18 months to 3 years)
  • Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (3 to 6 years)
  • Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority (6 to 12 years)
  • Stage 5: Identity vs. Role confusion (12 to 20 years)
  • Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation (20 to 40 years)
  • Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation (40-65 years)
  • Stage 8: Ego Integrity vs. Despair (+65 years)