Toward a Developmental Psychopathology of Personality Disturbance: A Neurobehavioral Dimensional Model Incorporating Genetic, Environmental, and Epigenetic Factors

Abstract

We propose a dimensional model of personality disturbance in which personality pathology develops as an emergent product defined by extreme values on interacting subsets of several major personality traits. Being at the extreme ends of the continua described in this model has marked effects on the threshold for eliciting those traits under stimulus conditions: marked effects on the extent to which the environment affects the neurobiological functioning underlying the traits. To explore the nature of development of extreme values on these traits, each trait is discussed in terms of three major issues: (1) the neurobiological variables associated with the trait; (2) individual variation in this neurobiology as a function of genetic polymorphisms; and (3) the effects of environmental adversity on these neurobiological variables through the action of epigenetic processes. It is noted that gene–environment interaction appears to be dependent on two main factors: (1) both genetic and environmental variables appear to have the most profound and enduring effects when they exert their effects during early postnatal periods, times when the forebrain is undergoing exuberant experience‐expectant dendritic and axonal growth; and (2) environmental effects on neurobiology are strongly modified by individual differences in trait‐like functioning of neurobiological variables. We present this model of the development of personality disturbance for its heuristic potential as an organizing framework for understanding personality disturbance, one that emphasizes the interaction between environmental and neurobiological variables in the development of this form of psychopathology.

The Impact of Social Exclusion on “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Performance in Relation to Borderline Personality Disorder Features

“…Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire -Brief Form (MPQ-BF). The MPQ-BF (Patrick, Curtin, & Tellegen, 2002) was used as a broad self-report measure of personality features that are known to be reflective of neurobehavioral systems of relevance to BPD (Depue & Lenzenweger, 2005;Lenzenweger & Depue, 2016). The MPQ-BF includes 155 mostly true/false statements about personality traits that cover 11 domains (α = 0.75-0.84).…”

Malignant Narcissism in Relation to Clinical Change in Borderline Personality Disorder: An Exploratory Study

“…We sought to construct a proxy measure, given the rich dataset we had to work with [5,21], that would tap the major features of Kernberg's malignant narcissism construct. What we attempted was as an augmentation of a traditionally categorical model of personality pathology by developing a dimensional 5 approach to measuring malignant narcissism that synthesizes different personality and personality disorder facets [13,29]. The clinical dataset we had at our disposal allowed us to configure a composite index that incorporated grandiose narcissism, which is in large part what is defined in the DSM-IV definition of narcissistic pathology, along with paranoid personality disorder features (also DSM-IV).…”

“…We are mindful of proposed changes for the conceptualization of personality pathology, with an emerging preference for dimensional assessments and models ( [35]; e.g., the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders in the DSM-5; the Five-Factor/Big-5; the Lenzenweger and Depue [13,29] neurobehavioral approaches) as well as a focus on dimensions of pathology that might exist outside the traditional nomenclatures (e.g., the RDoC approach). The dimensional approach is one that our team has long embraced [3,5,29,36,37].…”

“…One could, therefore, conceptualize his malignant narcissism construct as reflective of a severe range along a dimension of pathology. Such a continuum view would be methodologically congenial to contemporary approaches to neurobehavioral systems models of personality (e.g., [13]), alternative dimensional models of personality disorder [15], and current approaches to psychopathology research (e.g., RDoC; [16]. We sought, therefore, using an existing database, to construct a composite index measure of malignant narcissism and to evaluate its heuristic potential.…”

“…Such a person may even pleasurably experience self-mutilation behaviors [3,4]. Malignant narcissism 1 , therefore, can be thought of as a richly emergent phenomenon 2 [13] deriving from a collection of personality inputs that coalesce into a particularly challenging, even dangerous, form of psychopathology (e.g., Saddam Hussein, [14]). We note that in malignant narcissism these various features are blended and harbored together within the person.…”