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Prototype Approach to Personality Disorders

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Synonyms

Categorical model; Personality disorder types; Prototype model

Definition

A prototype approach to personality disorders (PDs) conceptualizes personality pathology as discrete clinical phenotypes composed of related features. The similarity of a person’s personality features to a given PD prototype represents how prototypical he/she is of the phenotype.

Introduction

Although psychological theories of personality disorders largely trace their origins to psychoanalytic thinking about character a century ago, the notion of personality types emerged in different cultures and contexts over the past two millennia. Perhaps the best-known historical example of personality prototypes is the four temperaments articulated by Hippocrates in his treatise On the Nature of Man:sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric. Whereas today we might describe a person as extraverted and agreeable, Hippocrates would have categorized this person as sanguine. Modern prototype approaches to...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, 140 Moore Building, University Park, PA, 16801, USA

    Alison M. Schreiber, Nathan T. Hall & Michael N. Hallquist

Authors
  1. Alison M. Schreiber
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  2. Nathan T. Hall
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  3. Michael N. Hallquist
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Correspondence to Michael N. Hallquist .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA

    Bradley A. Green

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Schreiber, A.M., Hall, N.T., Hallquist, M.N. (2017). Prototype Approach to Personality Disorders. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_932-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_932-1

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