Paranoid Personality Disorder: A Synthesis of Developmental, Dynamic, and Descriptive Features

This paper brings the scattered literature on paranoid personality disorder together and synthesizes its various descriptive aspects into a multifaceted profile of the condition. The disorder consists of characteristic “overt” and “overt” findings in six areas of psychosocial functioning: (i) self-concept, (ii) interpersonal relations, (iii) social adaptation, (iv) ethics, standards and ideals, (v) love and sexuality, and (vi) cognitive style. Such conceptualization is superior to ordinary check-list methods of diagnosis since it combines descriptive and psychodynamic observations and correlates the behavioral and psychostructural (hence developmental) aspects of the paranoid character pathology. This profile also helps in more meaningful differential diagnosis of paranoid from related personality disorders.