Every aspect of our communication with others involves personality. That's why categorizing personalities is so important. By specifying the inner workings and motivations involved in each major type of personality, we can understand those with whom we come into contact, and thus communicate with them in more constructive ways. In several other articles I have delineated those personality types that are most commonly seen in my psychotherapy office. In everyday life, however, the other major personality types are equally common. Certain individuals are, for better or worse, less likely to show up in the psychotherapists office. Below you will find each of the other major personality styles, described in their most elemental forms. For each, the central conflict driving the personality style will be outlined. For each, the path toward growth through that conflict, or the necessary path for others in dealing with that personality style, will be illuminated.
Dependent Personality
Individuals with dependent personality are typically observed staying in relationships where they are treated in relatively abusive ways. They often appear to have a complete inability to stand up for themselves, even when they know they really should. On the other hand, they often don't feel they have a right to anything, and thus they are always giving in to the wants and needs of others. It is very typical for individuals with dependent personality to come from homes where a parent was significantly abusive and/or undermining of their independence. They have experienced interpersonal aggressiveness, even if they have never been physically abused (although they often have been). That is, by powerful influence of someone with whom the dependent was unable to confront, the dependent has been convinced that they are worthless. The dependent is often not especially fearful of others, but is, rather, fearful of being independent. At the same time, the dependent disdains any sign of anger within themselves. They have felt how anger and intimidation work, and they never want to hurt anyone like they themselves have been hurt. They maintain a clinging, needy, and fearful orientation to life as a defense against the possibility that their own angry and controlling tendencies, about which they successfully remain unconscious, could surface. In effect, they behave in opposite fashion to the feelings within themselves that they fear most. Dependent personalities only recover from their own self-destructive paths when they allow themselves enough anger and self-righteousness to act assertively. Assertiveness is clearly not aggressive, but to the dependent personality even assertiveness seems to be aggressive. To overcome their dependence on aggressive, controlling others, the dependent personality must see that some anger within them is acceptable and normal, and they must stand up for their rights.
Antisocial Personality
Antisocial personality is exactly the opposite of dependent personality. However, quite often these two disparately oriented individuals can come from very similar backgrounds. When the antisocial experiences intimidation and abuse, however, instead of becoming weak and needy like the dependent, they long for a time when they will be the masters of intimidation, aggression and manipulation. Typically the antisocial will not take on the dominant parent in the family until their size permits them to do so, but in the meantime they will find ways to intimidate and dominate others outside the family. They become the bully at school and take on authority figures who will not physically punish them. The antisocial develops a sense that accomplishment is something to be taken rather than earned. They do not care enough about others to develop any true feeling of responsibility for others. They have no sense of what is right or wrong. They want what they want, and they will do whatever they can to get what they want immediately. Antisocial personality generally cannot be rehabilitated because recovery requires caring. That is, if someone is going to have an influence on another person, that person must care enough to start taking responsibility for their reciprocal influence on others. There is, however, hope for antisocials. Although the antisocial will not develop healthy relationships, they can become productive members of society. Once the antisocial realizes that the only way to truly succeed in life, without going to jail or getting killed, is to play by society's rules enough to get along with others and maintain gainful employment, the antisocial can do so. In fact, many antisocials become extremely financially successful as they move ahead in life knowing the rules better than anyone else, and then using the rules to their advantage.
Avoidant Personality
Individuals with avoidant personality feel extremely uncomfortable around other people. Like the dependent personality, the avoidant has typically come from a home in which there was some level of interpersonal aggressiveness. However, the avoidant is much less likely to have actually been physically abused. The avoidant has developed within relationships at home that make them feel judged to the extreme. In their homes they have been both controlled and undermined. They have often been overprotected to an extreme level as well. They start to see themselves as interpersonally inadequate even as they experience some of their personal characteristics as worthwhile. Where the dependent believes they have no rights and no worth and thus must stay with someone who is powerful and strong even though angry and hurtful, the avoidant holds no hope that others will ever notice their worth and believes that others will repeatedly hurt them with judgment, ridicule, and lack of recognition. Like the dependent, recovery for the avoidant can develop from assertiveness. In one way assertiveness is easier for the avoidant since they already believe themselves to be worthwhile. However, in the avoidant, recovery requires them to discount the importance of others. Avoidants give others too much power by thinking that the opinions of others matter much more than they actually do. Interestingly, the avoidant's self-critical nature, which they have developed for the purpose of controlling the level to which criticism by others can hurt them, is actually far harsher than the criticism anyone else feels. If the avoidant can learn to care less about judgments of others, and more about their own judgments, which must become far less harsh, they can become more interpersonally comfortable, and thus develop full and healthy relationships.
Schizoid Personality
Schizoids have extremely little interpersonal involvement. Unlike the avoidant, however, who is a person who cares a great deal about others, the schizoid has little interpersonal involvement because they simply don't care. The schizoid typically comes from a home in which they were controlled by a parent to such an extreme level that their needs never counted for anything. They had to do like the parent, and think like the parent. In essence, they were merely the instrument of the parent. Experiencing those feelings in childhood leads to a complete lack of feeling since our feelings involve communicating our needs to others. If one's needs seem to have no importance whatsoever, they are pushed deep within where others can have no effect. Schizoids are sometimes seen in relationships because they are attractive to others who need to be with someone who has no needs. Although the schizoid has no need for relationship, they do desire sexual release, and thus they do seek out interpersonal contact. It is very difficult for someone with schizoid personality to change. They are literally locked into having no emotion, and that remains to be a useful orientation to life since anyone with whom they come into contact is viewed as another person to whom they must submit. In couples counseling schizoids do sometimes change because the level at which they are completely controlled by their spouse becomes so intolerable that even the schizoid starts to notice how bad they feel. At times, the schizoid can start to crack in such circumstances. Although the most likely scenario is an explosive outburst followed by a return to emotionless robotic compliance with expectations, occasionally the breakdown leads to a flood of feelings which can develop into a rebuilding of emotional life one step at a time. Such rebuilding requires, unfortunately, extreme changes in the spouse as well, who must relinquish significant control simultaneously to the schizoid learning to pay attention to their feelings.
Paranoid Personality
We all become paranoid at times. A person with paranoid personality, however, is suspicious of everything. Most frequently a person with paranoid personality grew up feeling ridiculed and put down, and also often abused, within a family where everything had to be kept secret. The more aggressive or powerful such ridicule was, and the closer to the paranoid the perpetrators of that ridicule, the more likely it is that the paranoid's current perspective will include feelings of persecution as opposed to mere ridicule. Feeling persecuted for the paranoid can lead to violently aggressive emotions. Because there is such a powerful need to hide that aggression for fear of what others might do in response, however, some paranoid personalities can become psychotic in their paranoia as their aggression turns to violent fantasy. As a child, the paranoid typically felt like everything they did was watched, analyzed and judged. It is common that the paranoid was unfavorably compared with others in the family as well. Frequently, they felt as though they might have traits that would make them successful, but even achievement could not prove them to be worthwhile human beings to those from whom they desired recognition. Meanwhile, it is often the case that others in the family were treated as though clearly worthwhile. Quite often the reason the paranoid was watched and analyzed so regularly was that his or her parents themselves were also paranoid. They suspected bad intentions from the paranoid in spite of some talents or possibly some usefulness. They would not trust him no matter what, and thus he felt untrustworthy as well as ridiculed. In turn he became the person who would not trust others so that he would no longer have to feel his own lack of trustworhiness. That is, instead of feeling untrustworthy, the paranoid chooses to see others as untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the paranoid's sensitivity to secrets, and his feeling that everyone is against him, results in others keeping secrets from him to keep him from getting upset. Thus, his fears become reality and prove him correct in his view that others cannot be trusted. In spite of the clear connection between his inability to trust and the fact that others behave in an untrustworthy manner, the paranoid never becomes aware of his own influence in making others keep secrets from him or talk behind his back. The paranoid rarely becomes close to anyone and thus it is quite difficult to disprove their view of an untrustworthy world. At times they do become close to others from whom they believe they might actually gain the approval they have always needed but have given up seeking. However, those individuals often remind them of family members and thus are likely to be somewhat conspiratorial in their own behavior. The conspiratorial nature of these few with whom they become close can lead to more proof that the world is untrustworthy. The paranoid, for obvious reasons, rarely shows up in a therapist's office. They do not want anyone to see their true feelings for fear that the other will take advantage, or worse, that the other will see that the paranoid is truly worthless. Nevertheless, if the paranoid does show up in therapy, perhaps as a child brought by a parent or by a spouse who has managed to be the one to whom the paranoid looks for possible acknowledgment, it is absolutely necessary to bolster an understanding of the paranoid as a legitimate, important, person, and to encourage openness. The paranoid must come to believe that he is worthy of love and affection, and that others will recognize that worth. Essentially, the cure for the paranoid is the discovery that openness does not necessarily lead to ridicule and that he is not elementally "bad." This cure can only take place if the primary relationships within his life transform from suspicious to trusting.
Personality disorders are extremely common. Although the personality disorders described above are not seen in therapy as much as narcissistic, borderline, passive aggressive, histrionic and obsessive compulsive personality disorders, they are likely equally common. Thus, many individuals seeking help for these problems, or seeking understanding of them due to how their own relationships are affected by others with these disorders, are perhaps in need of information about them that they are unlikely to find anywhere but in a book. Although these small vignettes of personality could prove insufficient, for anyone looking to find information about these disorders, it is hoped that these descriptive snippets offer a beginning in the search for better understanding.
