The illusion of personality: Why personality disorders are actually relational disorders

Despite almost a century of empirical research, the concept of personality disorder remains poorly understood and incredibly stigmatized. In this paper, I argue that most of the controversies and unresolved mysteries surrounding personality pathology can be traced back to a cognitive bias that I term the illusion of personality (pathology): our natural tendency to view most individual differences as personality differences (and their deviations from the norm as personality problems). I begin by illustrating how this illusion leads to the paradoxical, yet logical, conclusion that all mental disorders are personality disorders (an outcome that was a reality back in the 1900s). I then demonstrate how we can move beyond this illusion by defining each individual difference according to its predominant psychological theme (e.g., neuroticism as an ‘emotional’ trait) rather than by washing away that theme with the term ‘personality’ (i.e., neuroticism as a ‘personality’ trait). Subsequently, I apply this way of thinking to various personality constructs, including the five-factor traits, the self-other impairments of ‘personality disorder,’ and related social-cognitive disturbances, showing that all personality constructs that account for the development, maintenance, and treatment of personality disorder are all relational. On that basis, I argue that disorders of ‘personality’ can be respecified as disorders of ‘relationships,’ before concluding the paper with a set of suggestions on how we can move away from the illusory concept of ‘personality disorder’ and toward the more specific (and perhaps also humane) idea of ‘relational disorder.’