What is a Personality Disorder?
Personality disorders can be difficult to describe and can also be difficult to diagnose.  A personality disorder can be described as a collection of personality features expressed as a pattern of behavior and reacting that is maladaptive; that is, it creates problems for the individual because it causes conflict between that person and others or causes conflict within themselves.

Although there are criteria for diagnosing the various personality disorders, in actual fact, the label "disorder" is subjective.  It also depends upon the degree of distress within the individual because of conflict or the degree of distress created in others by that individual.  In other words, one-individual may have a personality style that is adaptive.  That is, it fits in with the environment in which they live and work, whereas other individual with the same personality style may be in conflict and thus be maladaptive.  Personality disorder is reserved for those personality styles that almost always create problems in some way for the individual.

What causes a Personality Disorder?
Normal peronality is the result of multiple factors that interact and some of the more important factors that shape peronality are listed.  These same factors to a greater or lesser degree can lead to a Personality Disorder as well.

Heredity
An individual's genetic makeup provides the template or pattern upon which personality is developed.  An individual inherits biological characteristics of both parents and this includes certain personality traits.  Genetics form the basis for temperament or constitution.  Temperament is often obvious from a very early age.  Infants can be easy going, complacent, fussy, overactive, and resistant to change, or respond to lots of stimulation.  Although these features often change, as an infant becomes a child, many temperamental features are enduring and crystalize into a Personality Pattern by young adulthood.

Parenting
The experience we have of our parents when we are children helps to mold and develop personality and adds to and modifies the genetic template.  We can acquire features such as the capacity to love, to be responsible, to be honest, to have high ideals, and to be ambitious (we can aquire opposite features as well).  We learn from our parents through direct teaching, reinforcement of behaviour (positive or negative), and imitation.  Through this, we develop habits or patterns of behaviour.  Also , as young childrn, our central nervous system is immature and in the process of development and maturation.  Experience leads to permanent changes in our brain, which results in behavior patterns that become part of our biological being.  Sometimes good parenting is not sufficient to override the effect of a bad combination of genes, and sometimes in spite of bad heredity, bood parenting prevails!