Social Factors in the Personality Disorders
A Biopsychosocial Approach to Etiology and Treatment

This book explains the personality disorders and their treatment in terms of a broad biopsychosocial model.

Joel Paris (Author), Peter Tyrer (Foreword by)

9780521472241, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 May 1996

256 pages, 1 b/w illus. 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.497 kg

'… a concise and comprehensive overview of the key issues … The author succeeds in presenting a contentious subject in an authoritative and fascinating manner'. British Journal of Psychiatry

Personality disorders have been recognized as categories of psychiatric illness, and still need to be better defined. This book interprets the personality disorders as products of the interaction between social influences and other aetiological factors as part of a broad biopsychosocial model, and explains how personality traits develop into personality disorders. Strongly oriented towards recent empirical findings, the author argues that although biological, psychological and social factors are all necessary, none of them is by itself sufficient to produce a personality disorder. This basic model is also a model of treatment, in which biological, experiential and social factors should all be addressed in therapy and his treatment recommendations focus particularly on social adjustment through the adaptive use of personality traits.

Introduction
1. Overview
2. Personality traits and personality disorders
3. Biological factors
4. Psychological factors
5. Social factors: methods
6. Social factors: mechanisms
7. A biopsychosocial theory
8. The odd cluster
9. The impulsive cluster
10. The anxious cluster
11. Treatment
12. Clinical practice
epilogue: summary and implications.

Subject Areas: Psychiatry [MMH]