Out of Balance: Personality Disorders
Personality itself can become distorted to the point that psychological dysfunction becomes tightly interwoven with an individual's patterns of behavior. Such disorders are principally developmental in origin. There are a number of psychological ill...
The Enduring Self: Personality Inventories
In recent years personality inventories have become an increasingly common assessment tool in searching for a CiO or looking for a date. The key idea of an inventory is to determine the basic underlying dimensions of someone's personality. The use o...
The Enduring Self: Genetic Links to Personality
There is growing evidence that many personality traits have a genetic basis. Human neuromodulatory systems have set points that regulate such dimensions as how active a person is and whether or not they tend to avoid new experiences. These set point...
Getting It Together: Does Psychotherapy Really Work?
People with psychological disorders do get better, and they tend to attribute their improvement to the therapy, but the question is would they have gotten better with no treatment at all. The key is research, which is difficult given confidentiality...
Out of Balance: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
A person who suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder repeatedly re-experiences a disturbing event in their life. A scene of what happened pops into their mind or they alternately try to convince themselves that it could not have happened. Not eve...