The History of Personality Disorders
Below is a MRR and PLR article in category Reference Education -> subcategory Psychology.
The History of Personality Disorders
Summary
Until the 18th century, mental illnesses were broadly categorized as "delirium" or "mania," encompassing depression, psychoses, and delusions. The understanding of mental health evolved significantly over the centuries, leading to more refined classifications, including personality disorders.
Article
In the 18th century, mental illnesses were broadly labeled as "delirium" or "mania," covering conditions like depression (melancholy), psychoses, and delusions. The shift in understanding began in the early 19th century when French psychiatrist Pinel introduced "manie sans delire" (insanity without delusions), describing patients who lacked impulse control and exhibited violent outbursts, without delusions. This early description pointed to what we now recognize as Antisocial Personality Disorder. Around the same time, similar observations were made by American physician Benjamin Rush.
In 1835, J. C. Pritchard, a British physician, advanced the conversation with his work "Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders of the Mind," coining the term "moral insanity." He described it as a "morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses," without intellectual defects or delusions.
Pritchard shed light on the psychopathic personality: a tendency toward theft, eccentric behavior, and a radical change in moral character. However, the lines between personality, affective, and mood disorders remained blurred. Pritchard further confused matters, linking "moral insanity" to mood variations such as gloom or preternatural excitement.
A structured classification that distinguished between personality disorders, affective disorders, schizophrenia, and depressive illnesses took another 50 years to develop. "Moral insanity" remained a widely used term until Henry Maudsley, in 1885, critiqued its ambiguity as resembling vice or crime. He sought a more scientific approach, criticizing the term’s vague and judgmental nature.
In 1891, German doctor J. L. A. Koch proposed calling it "psychopathic inferiority," later altering it to "psychopathic personality" to reduce judgment. By the 8th edition of Kraepelin's "Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie," the term was expanded to cover excitable, unstable, eccentric, liar, swindler, and quarrelsome personalities.
Despite this, antisocial behavior remained the focus. Any conduct deviating from societal norms risked the label of "psychopathic." K. Schneider later broadened the definition, including individuals harming themselves or others, labeling those with depression, social anxiety, or excessive shyness as "psychopaths."
Scottish psychiatrist Sir David Henderson's 1939 work "Psychopathic States" challenged previous notions by classifying psychopaths as individuals exhibiting recurrent antisocial behavior, defying societal, penal, and medical interventions.
In his classification, Henderson identified three types of psychopaths:
- Aggressive: Violent, suicidal, prone to substance abuse.
- Passive and Inadequate: Over-sensitive, unstable, introverted.
- Creative: Dysfunctional yet capable of achieving fame.
Twenty years later, the 1959 Mental Health Act in England and Wales defined "psychopathic disorder" as a persistent mental disorder leading to aggressive or irresponsible conduct requiring medical treatment.
This definition, however, returned to the view that abnormal behavior was simply that which causes harm to others. It excluded behaviors not requiring medical intervention. Thus, "psychopathic personality" became synonymous with both "abnormal" and "antisocial," a confusion still debated today. Some, like Canadian Robert Hare, distinguish psychopaths from those with mere antisocial personality disorder, while others call for clarity by opting for the latter term.
This ambiguity has resulted in co-morbidity, where patients often receive multiple overlapping diagnoses. By 1950, Schneider noted the difficulty in classifying psychopaths effectively, a challenge that persists.
Today, most clinicians rely on either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Although these manuals differ on some points, they largely agree on the classifications of mental disorders, including personality disorders.
You can find the original non-AI version of this article here: The History of Personality Disorders.
You can browse and read all the articles for free. If you want to use them and get PLR and MRR rights, you need to buy the pack. Learn more about this pack of over 100 000 MRR and PLR articles.