Hi there,

Many years ago at age 22 I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder upon a suicide attempt. I have completed a psychology degree and have read about this specific disorder and have come to the conclusion that I do not have it based upon the fact that I present with only a few of the symptoms. I do not self harm and do not have volatile relationships, in fact I have had the same close friends for 20 years.

Ten years later I saw another Psychiatrist that stated I did not have the condition either. I struggle with social interaction and have had difficulty maintaining stable employment and tend to get bored very easily. When I think about it there is no major dysfunction in that I am not an aggressive person and do not intentionally cause problems for others. What I struggle to understand is the political and volatile nature of the workplace, in how people tend to make judgements about others without any evidence to support their assertion. A supervisor once said to me that perhaps the problem is with others not with me. I suspected that I may have Asperger's which is a neurodevelopmental disorder not a mental illness. I saw a specialist in this area that concluded I had the condition based upon a number of tests.


What is the evidence for the existence of personality disorders? Currently Psychologists use the five factor model to determine variation from the mean to indicate pathology, however how accurate is this? The assumption is that personality remains stable over a person's lifetime, however I don't understand how this is possible. We have different experiences and challenges, therefore to be able to control for these variables in order to determine consistent traits seems impossible at this point. Why is it that females are more commonly diagnosed with personality disorders than males? Is this a an extension relating to the misogyny of the profession? Freud coined the term hysteria to describe women who struggled with PTSD, could this be a similar phenomenon? Also why is there such a high divorce rate if people remain the same throughout their life?