Understanding personality: A Non-diagnostic portrayal

The formation of a personality comes from a myriad of influences. I experience this very construct as fluid though it is often bound by patterns that hold psychic dilemmas and the inner world of a person. The fluidity evolves into a distinct identity, as a person comes into their own as an individual in human society. The juxtaposition of qualities depicts how implicitly relational the making up of a personality is - it is a co-created product informed by the environment, object relation of caregivers and complexities of navigating human society. Personality is dynamic, contrary to the belief that there is enough information online that prescribes personality traits and predictability of behavior as watered-down categories designed for quick deduction and assessment of the whole self through a trait-based criteria of person's behavior.

Our relationships influence our personalities. Personalities carry an undertone of morality when categorized. These enables the view that personalities can be slotted into ‘good ones’ and ‘bad ones’. The good ones become the golden standard, a form of model behavior, leaving very little room for experiencing personality traits and behaviors as a spectrum. While categorization and labels have immensely contributed to solidifying the belief that objectivity helps understand people’s ways of being, it takes away from the deeply nuanced inner world of psychic dynamism.

This photograph was captured by Durga Menon

The psychic world responds to adapting to human society, shaped by how we communicate to the first group we are born into- our family. Our responses are developed through attunement that acts as an unspoken language between the caregiver and child. The experience of care is extremely crucial in how the fluid nature of personality is touched - the ripples of the psyche influence how one interacts, withdraws and plays with the self and others.

The mother-child dyad plays a developmental role in how the child experiences containment and its predictability - it impacts the way a child understands whether they can be held, heard, and seen and if this is being registered by those who are meant to care for him or her. The pattern of these ripples signifies the intensity of the 'mother-child' dyad - the gentle flitting of a skipping stone on the surface, a drop of a stone into depth, or an intentional plunk that sends waves into the psyche of a child. The language for stability and balance is formed here, along with capacity for reality and self-reflection. When the formative years of containment within the dyad or the family system are experienced as chaotic, the child begins to internalize and associate relationships in the same way eventually creating a permanent sense of chaos that begins to emerge as traits that make sense to the individual.

“I am consistently inconsistent in my being.”

“I am permanently in touch with dysregulation that feels familiar and containing ”

“The capacity to hold and manage has been left in me and so it is left to me to be there for myself.”

Personality difficulties and traits are a by-product of early experiences and coping mechanisms that are chosen to hold one in the absence and presence of a container, mostly in the context of care that has lacked continuity and consistency outside of a crisis. The implicit language that is tied to the diagnostic criteria for any of the 'personality disorders’ suggest that abnormality doesn't have a conceivable path for reparation. I am reminded of how clinical psychology seeks impact through labeling and being able to ‘name it’ in the therapy room. However, the mark that is left from such a conversation isn't compassionately modelled.

The word, 'dis-order' implies that authoritarian language has the license to correct, reprimand and discipline patterns that are viewed as deviant. Thus, norms and expectations by others who are ‘orderly’ (seemingly put together) are granted permission to extend themselves to care for those who have traits that are erratic and disruptive. Disorder as a choice of description is 'othering' leaving those who have experienced difficulty in sustaining themselves in relationships to fend for themselves outside the margin of systemic care and support. This strongly points to how systemic failure is at a linguistic level, let alone the lack of resources to those looking to understand their distress

I have heard a range of anecdotes where clinical and psychiatric support is sensitive to the patient’s need for diagnostic labels, and careful assessment is conducted across sessions. More often, I have heard of patients being taken through the conversation of a diagnosis that has been communicated through a checklist of statements.

In my fantasy, I am in touch with the shame, isolation, and self-disgust that an undiagnosed patient may feel in trying to make sense of themselves almost at the mercy of these seemingly rigid criteria that resist their imagination of themselves, putting them in boxes and treatment interventions that repeatedly tell them in a few words or none that they are ‘not healthy’, ‘not enough’, and ‘not capable or deserving of goodness’. The abrasive language and exclusion after a PD label has been given are ignored, as if care stops at the label. The imagination of clinical psychology and psychiatry is limited by diagnostic language, leaving patients inheriting the same meaning-making mechanisms for their lived experiences..

The term, personality difficulties sit with me better as a practitioner and someone who has found my fantasies of my clients slowly withering into a lifeless grey moldy substance when it has been listed as traits reducing the psychic dilemmas and the complexity of personality dynamism into bullet points. Personality difficulties, to me as a phrase sparks a curiosity to delve into the context and attachment style that has evolved from early caregiving, deprivation, and need management.

At the moment, I feel curious to understand the depth of it and expand my language on personality as a spectrum and so the word difficulties put me in touch with being able to look at one’s sense of self as unique, complex, and nuanced rather than problematic, needs fixing and worthy of intervention by a ‘healthier’, ‘all-knowing’ authoritarian language.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DURGA MENON offers online therapy and is an advocate for ecofriendly living.

To know more about her, visit her on www.ecofriendlytherapist.com