Personality disorders and the five-factor model of personality

"This is a difficult yet also exciting time for the diagnosis and classification of personality disorders. The American Psychiatric Association is in the process of constructing the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). In a survey of members of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders and the Association for Research on Personality Disorders, 80% of respondents indicated that they felt that "personality disorders are better understood as variants of normal personality than as categorical disease entities" (Bernstein, Iscan, Maser, & the Boards of Directors of the Association for Research in Personality Disorders and the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders, 2007, p. 542). The DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group appears to be taking a number of steps to embrace this conceptual position, shifting toward a five-factor model (FFM) conceptualization of personality disorder. The substantial shift of DSM-5 toward the FFM has been the result of a considerable amount of research that occurred prior to the first and second editions of the current text (Costa & Widiger, 1994, 2002) as well as even more research that has occurred since the publication of those editions. Persons familiar with these two prior editions will notice that many new chapters have been included in this latest edition, reflecting the substantial amount of empirical and clinical work that has occurred since the 2002 edition. We attempt to provide in this third edition a reasonably comprehensive summary and representation of this empirical and clinical literature"--Chapter. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).… (more)