Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder and Personality Type?

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For those of you who aren't familiar with the Myers Briggs Temperment sorter, here's a brief intro...

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The heart of Jung’s psychology is a typology of personality. A typology is a system for classifying data according to certain stable characteristics. A typology aids understanding. The classification of animals and plants into genus and phylum or into species and subspecies is an example of a typology. If you wanted to better understand trees, you might go into the forest and observe certain characteristics that always that are always present and grouped together and label them a pine tree. Another set of characteristics you might call an oak tree, and a third set could be an elm tree. With this typology whenever you went into any forest, you would be able to differentiate one tree from another. This typing of trees make the forest more understandable.

A typology always simplifies and some subtle details are lost but there is an increase in general understanding. Typologies facilitate a gain in the general understanding by making clear what commonalties exist. Typologies of personality help us understand human behavior. They also simplify, but clarity is gained and uniqueness is not lost. One pine tree or one person always continues to differ from every other and thus remains unique. Applied to people a typology takes the variety of human characteristics and puts them into a limited number of categories as an aid to understanding.

The Jungian model of personality is a typology. Once we lose the unconscious wholeness of infancy and the Garden we move out into the world. Here we must begin to make choices between the paired opposites of personality functioning. These opposites are seen in the attitudes of extroversion and introversion and the functions of sensation-intuition and thinking-feeling. The attitudes and functions represent preferences. Everyone has an inherent potential of all these choices. The seeds of each exist within us. They exist as opposites. As a result of life experience we emphasize one over the other. We make choices and these preferences then determine our personality style.

The choices are:
<center>Extraversion or Introversion
Sensation or INtuition
Thinking or Feeling
Judging or Perceiving</center>

The bold letters identify the preferences and together they yield a total of 16 personality types shown by various combinations of letters. For example: ESTJ is the extraverted, sensation, thinking, judging type; INFP is the introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving type.

[b]Source: Climbing the Ladder of Personality Structure

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Okay, that'll have to do as an intro to Jungian Typology.

I find myself wondering about different forms of psychosis and personality type. For example, "schizophrenia" is often marked by a desire for withdrawal from the world whereas when an individual is undergoing a "manic" form of psychosis, it's very much out there, engaged in the outer world. Both are forms of psychosis but one is very much internalized while the other is very much externalized.

What I'm wondering is do extroverts have episodes of psychosis that more closely resemble what we would call bipolar disorder and introverts have episodes of psychosis that more closely mimic what we would call schizophrenia?

If you're not sure what your own temperment score might be, you can try some of the tests on this page.

To learn more about the types themselves, you can try here: Type Logic.

For the record, I score strongly as intuitive introvert, an IN, but I tend to score on either side of the middle when it comes to the other aspects, depending on when you catch me. Overall, I'm probably closest to INFJ. My own experience of psychosis is far closer to the "schizophrenic" (introverted) than the "bipolar" (extroverted) end of the spectrum.

If you're up to it, feel free to share your score and where your own experience of "psychosis" lies on the mental health spectrum.

My own experience with psychosis was the schizophrenic/withdrawn form of psychosis, unlike my father, who underwent mania. My personality type is INTJ.

i've been taking this test over several years and have consistantly scored as INTP.

specifically:
68% Introverted
95% iNtuitive
89% Thinking
100% Perceiving

the only percentage that's ever fluctuated has been the introversion, which has been as low as 53% and as high as 89%. i suspect these two extremes correlate with the mania/depressive aspects of my bipolar dx.

hey. i hope you don't mind my saying this...

personality psychology is very controversial. in particular, it is very controversial whether people have different traits (such as 'compassionate') that is robustly predictive of their behaviour.

the main critique from within psychology comes from the situationist literature. the situationists maintain that they can predict what a person is likely to do on the basis of features of the situation and that there is better predictive leverage to be had by predicting from situation than predicting from personality traits. here is an example of the kind of situation they experimented with.

they placed a coin in the phonebox for someone to find after they had made the call. they then had a person walk past as they left the phonebox and the person dropped a stack of papers. they found that people who found a coin in the phone box were significantly more likely to help the person pick up the papers than control subjects who didn't find a coin.

people are more likely to help when they aren't crowded or rushed. people are more likely to help when the situation smells nice (e.g., outside a bakery rather than outside a fish shop). people are more likely to help when the situation isn't noisy (e.g., with construction work).

people are more likely to harm when they are instructed to harm by a person wearing a white coat and saying 'the experiment requires that you must go on'.

the situation was highly predictive of helping behaviour and it seemed to be more predictive of helping behaviour than any assignment of the trait of 'compassion' seems to be. if you take the same individual and vary the situation you will find that they will be compassionate in some situations and not compassionate in others. there isn't good evidence for stable traits.

Self report has also been found to correlate badly with other report and both have been found to correlate badly with action.

so... i'm fairly sceptical of the Myer Briggs and the Big Five and the other personality measurements.

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alexandra_k: personality psychology is very controversial. in particular, it is very controversial whether people have different traits (such as 'compassionate') that is robustly predictive of their behaviour.

Essentially, you seem to be asking a number of questions:<blockquote>1.) Can we identify characteristics of personality?

2.) Can we group individuals according to those characteristics?

3.) Can we now predict with any degree of accuracy what those groups of people will do in a specific situation?</blockquote>Generally speaking, I think the answer to all of the above is yes but obviously, there's margin for error. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that "personality" is not fixed in stone. Another problem is that no matter how predictable our behavior might be, everyone occasionally steps out of character and behaves in a manner that is "uncharacteristic".

Still... take the attributes of introverted and extroverted. These are fairly easy to identify within others and ourselves. My own experience of the Myers Briggs test -- like Fnordian Slip I've taken it several times over many years -- consistently scores me as introverted but there's less consistency on the other markers.

Can my own behavior be predicted as based on the personality marker of "introverted"? To a certain degree, I think it can. For example, given a multitude of choices as to how I could spend my leisure time, I'm probably going to choose something that lends itself to solitude. If I go to a party, I'm more likely to drift to the periphery of the party's edges (where I'm convinced the conversations are better). If I need to recharge my batteries, I'm probably going to need to be alone or with a very small group of people. I can count my friends on one hand but I would need many hands to count how deep those friendships go. When I do spend time with others they often comment that I am a calming presence -- I'm not exactly the "excitable" type.

On the other hand, I know a young woman who radiates vibrant energy. If she goes to a party, she is the party! If she doesn't have the opportunity to be with people on a regular basis, she becomes enervated and depleted. She has many friends although she may not spend a lot of time with all of them, and she can kick up your own energy levels by several notches simply by being in her presence. She's very much an extrovert and she knows it, just as those around her know it. It's interesting to note that she does have moments of self-chosen solitude just as I have occasional moments of being in the spotlight of center stage, but both of us are less inclined to choose those activities and when we do, we spend far less time there than the other does. Both of us are human beings living our lives but we are responding to those lives very differently.

Now, to return to the topic at hand, consider the experience of psychosis. Some people go through this experience and it's very much an internal experience; others go through it and it's very much an external experience. The current opinion is that the internalized experience of psychosis is one kind of disorder while the externalized experience of psychosis is yet another type of disorder. I suppose I'm being speculative myself when I ask, are these two different disorders or is this simply one experience funnelled through different filters? If we could "give" people the experience of psychosis would introverts present us with one view of psychosis and extroverts present us with a different view of psychosis?

My question is speculative as are any answers produced because this thread is not likely to draw the hundreds of responses that might be necessary to produce a verifiable pattern of consistency. It's not even producing consistency thus far! Of the three responses to date, all respondants report with the personality characteristic of introversion but the applied diagnosis are not consistent.

For what it's worth, I've run the experience up against a few other models. One of them was the Chakra System. In that instance I speculated that psychosis is the equivalent of energy and perhaps, the different behaviors we see in psychosis is related to energy blockages within the chakra system, i.e., an energy blockage at the root chakra might manifest with different symptoms as opposed to an energy blockage at the heart chakra.

I've also played with Clare Grave's Spiral Dynamics model, speculating that the experience (and perhaps, even the result) of psychosis will "look" different dependant upon the "level of human existence" an individual was at when they entered the psychotic state.

None of this is necessarily scientific -- mostly, it's just my own meandering speculative attempts to understand as much as possible the experience known as psychosis in this culture. However, it may be more beneficial to think of oneself as an "introvert" or an "extrovert" as opposed to a "schizophrenic" or "bi-polaric" because there is far less stigma or shame associated with the labels of introversion and extroversion. Me, I'm an introvert and not the least bit ashamed of being one.

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As an addendum...

My question is speculative as are any answers produced because this thread is not likely to draw the hundreds of responses that might be necessary to produce a verifiable pattern of consistency. It's not even producing consistency thus far! Of the three responses to date, all respondants report with the personality characteristic of introversion but the applied diagnosis are not consistent.

Assuming even that this thread did attract hundreds of responses, would that paint a true portrait of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? We can't really know because you will probably find more introverts on the net than extroverts -- surfing the net tends to be a "solitary" activity. Therefore the only viable conclusion we might be able to draw would be that more introverts responded to this thread than extroverts. The extroverts are all at parties, that's why.</blockquote>

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Second addendum...

alexandra_k: people are more likely to harm when they are instructed to harm by a person wearing a white coat and saying 'the experiment requires that you must go on'.

This is only true if people interpret a "white coat" to be a symbol of superiority and authority. Remove the white coat -- the symbol of superiority and authority -- and replace it with something else (a clown's nose? a sweatshirt? a fisherman's vest?) and people present with a different response.

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spiritual_emergency said:

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Second addendum...

alexandra_k: people are more likely to harm when they are instructed to harm by a person wearing a white coat and saying 'the experiment requires that you must go on'.

This is only true if people interpret a "white coat" to be a symbol of superiority and authority. Remove the white coat -- the symbol of superiority and authority -- and replace it with something else (a clown's nose? a sweatshirt? a fisherman's vest?) and people present with a different response.



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besides which, i have a keen sense of mistrust where 'white coats' are concerned, and absolutely no respect for authority. and clowns are just plain scary.

>> people are more likely to harm when they are instructed to harm by a person wearing a white coat and saying 'the experiment requires that you must go on'.

> This is only true if people interpret a "white coat" to be a symbol of superiority and authority. Remove the white coat -- the symbol of superiority and authority -- and replace it with something else (a clown's nose? a sweatshirt? a fisherman's vest?) and people present with a different response.

yes, that is the idea. the notion is that what behaviour people exhibit is determined more by factors of the situation (whether the person is wearing a white coat or not) than by features of their personality. there is an account of the experiment here:

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

> Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts.

which is to say that 65% of people who participated in the experiment believed that they were delivering shocks that would kill the subject simply because a man in a white coat told them to. the results have been replicated. to the best of my knowledge no consistent personality traits were found to explain why some subjects didn't shock the person to that degree. the notion is that whatever test you have for how 'compassionate' a person is the test isn't as predictive as the situation is (where the situation tells us that the person will more likely shock until they believe the person has died). frightening, huh.

similarly if you want to predict whether the person will help the other person pick up their papers or not the situation (whether they find money or not) delivers a more reliable prediction than any personality traits do.

> Essentially, you seem to be asking a number of questions:
1.) Can we identify characteristics of personality?
2.) Can we group individuals according to those characteristics?
3.) Can we now predict with any degree of accuracy what those groups of people will do in a specific situation?

yeah. i think that is a pretty good way of breaking the question up. one could ask (i think this is fairly much in line with your above schema):
1.) Are there basic traits that are predictive of behaviour?
2.) What are they?

> Generally speaking, I think the answer to all of the above is yes but obviously, there's margin for error.

yeah. it is an empirical question how predictive current traits are. they aren't very predictive, however (not much over chance). that doesn't rule out the possibility that there aren't traits that would be predictive, however, it might just be that we haven't found the relevant traits yet.

there are going to be exceptions. there isn't any reason why the behavioural predictions can't be probabilistic. it is just that we would want the traits to predict behaviours over half the time otherwise it isn't really predictive at all. there might be different thresholds for different traits. if i say someone is 'couragous' then what if he isn't couragous at all with respect to spiders and snakes? doesn that show he isn't couragous? maybe 'couragous' isn't an appropriate trait and maybe we need to go more fine grained. how about 'couragous in combat'? but what if the person is couragous under artiliary fire but not couragous against swords? do we need to go even more fine grained? is a person couragous in battle if he fights bravely nine out of ten times and flees one out of ten times or does such a behaviour undermine attributions of couragousness? i'm not sure. just creating trouble for trait theorists ;-)

> take the attributes of introverted and extroverted. These are fairly easy to identify within others and ourselves.

but i might be extroverted with a few close friends and introverted with strangers (or vice versa). i might be extroverted at office partys and introverted with my relatives. introverted when i have a headache and extroverted when i'm feeling happy and safe etc.

> My own experience of the Myers Briggs test -- like Fnordian Slip I've taken it several times over many years -- consistently scores me as introverted but there's less consistency on the other markers.

it might be that the test is really measuring... your self concept. since the test requires you to choose you choose. and the choices you make affect the way you see yourself which affects the way you answer the test in subsequent sittings.

> The current opinion is that the internalized experience of psychosis is one kind of disorder while the externalized experience of psychosis is yet another type of disorder.

i'm not sure what you mean by 'internalised' and 'externalised' experience. do you mean 'negative' and 'positive' symptoms or something else?

Brendan Maher might interest you (psychologist at Harvard, I think). He argued against the 'positive' and 'negative' distinction insofar as 'positive' symptoms are meant to be to do with the presence of something abnormal whereas the 'negative' symptoms are meant to be to do with the absence of something normal. He basically thinks that whether something is classified as 'positive' or 'negative' has more to do with how we describe it than anything else. For example, we could say that someone is socially withdrawn and describe that as an absence of normal social behaviours (hence it is a negative symptom). We could alternatively say that someone is occupied with their experiences and describe (the same behaviour) as a presence of abnormal self preoccupation (hence it is a positive symptom). I just mean to say that the positive / negative (hence?) introversion / extraversion distinction might be problematic.

> ...it's just my own meandering speculative attempts to understand as much as possible the experience known as psychosis in this culture.

:-)
I think that it is a very cool idea
:-)

> However, it may be more beneficial to think of oneself as an "introvert" or an "extrovert" as opposed to a "schizophrenic" or "bi-polaric" because there is far less stigma or shame associated with the labels of introversion and extroversion. Me, I'm an introvert and not the least bit ashamed of being one.

I hear you.

I'm thinking it might be more beneficial to think of oneself as having been in unfortunate situations. that there might be less shame in being something of a 'victim' of circumstances (environmental events or situations) that lie outside our control. and it may provide hope that there really isn't anything wrong with us at all... if only we could figure out a way to be in more fitting situations!

:-)

very cool ideas though, keep 'em coming.

here is a reference for some scepticism on the notion of personality traits:

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogu...=9780521608909

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alexandra_k: i'm not sure what you mean by 'internalised' and 'externalised' experience. do you mean 'negative' and 'positive' symptoms or something else?

I'll provide you with two examples. Bear in mind I'm far more familiar with "schizophrenic" experiences than I am with "bipolar" experiences -- I sincerely hope I'm not off in my understandings.

A young woman I knew went through a bipolar episode. It lasted several weeks during which she had an abundance of energy; spent a very great deal of money, and entered into a number of short-term sexual relationships. In other words, she went out a lot, she interacted with a lot of people, and; she participated in a number of activities in the outer world. It was very much an external experience.

In my own experience, I got very quiet and became very withdrawn from the outer world. I came into a room, locked the door behind me, and spent the next few weeks there -- I was entirely caught up in an inner drama that was unfolding within me and that seemed entirely real to me. I had very little human contact with others. This was very much an internal experience. ( The articles here describe my own experience very, very well.)

It's worth noting that there was some common ground between our experiences. For example, we both experienced stages that might be labelled as "manic" where we ate and slept very little. For her, that was when she was spending the most money, going to the most parties, and having the most relationships. For me, I had somehow found a means of going "out" by going "in" -- I was out somewhere in the depths of the cosmos dancing with god. Some aspects of her experience were also deeply spiritual.

So... there's some common ground there but also some very different aspects of our experience that perhaps could be classified as "introverted" and "extroverted". Both of us had periods that could be classified as "mania" and "psychosis" but we each responded differently to those phases. Was this because she was having a "bi-polar" experience and I was having a "schizophrenic" experience or was this because she's an extrovert and I'm an introvert?

It's difficult to say. Either way, I'm out of speculation time at the present moment.

Hey. I think I get what you mean by 'internalised' and 'externalised' experience now.

Experience is interesting... The current classification manuals (DSM and ICD) aren't phenomenal classifications so much as behavioural classifications. Sometimes people distinguish between 'signs' and 'symptoms' where signs are phenomenal or experiential features and symptoms are objectively observable behavioural features. The DSM and ICD focus (for the most part) on symptoms (in order to promote inter-rater reliability - or agreement between clinician's) though the line gets a little blurry with respect to 'verbal behaviours' being objectively assessable and where the verbal behaviours can be reports of phenomenal experience.

I'm not too sure on this... But I think that the DSM and ICD aren't really focused on the experiential aspects so much as the behavioural aspects. As such, the term 'mania' is operationalised and assessed according to what you might think of as 'extroverted' behaviours rather than assessed by the presence of verbal reports of pleasant, or spiritual experiences.

It is an interesting idea that the phenomenology of such experiences might be the same, it is just the way that the person responds to the experience that is different.

Richard Bentall argues that there isn't a categorical difference between mood disorders (e.g., bi-polar) and psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia). While the distinction is a very old one (it might originate in Kraeplin, though it might be even older than that, I'm not sure) it certainly is problematic. One way that the problem has been dealt with is to introduce a midway category of 'schizoaffective' in which to place people who seem to have BOTH psychotic and affective symptoms.

I think... That the distinction between affective disorders and psychotic disorders isn't clear cut. Bentall argues that instead of thinking that there are two (or three) distinct categories we are best to consider a dimension like this:

psychotic symptoms (thought disorders).............affective symptoms (mood disorder)

and a person falls somewhere along the continuum according to which symptom predominates. someone with 'schizoaffective' would fall squarely in the middle. this move requires that there be a hard and fast distinction between thought and mood, however, in order to assess how much each aspect is present...

my personal take... is that what have traditionally been regarded as 'thought' or 'psychotic' disorders are best conceptualised as 'affective' or 'emotional' or even 'experiential' disorders. the notion is in line with Maher's notion where he thinks that delusions are 'normal' or 'rational' or 'understandable' responses to certain kinds of anomalous experiences. the idea is that if any of us had those experiences (of sufficient intensity and duration) then we too would develop delusional beliefs. this one-factor line (where the nature of the experience determines the presence or absense of delusions) may be contrasted with the more standard two-factor line (where a cognitive or rational deficit is required IN ADDITION to an anomalous experience). while this is controversial... I think that the relevant kind of anomalous experience is best thought of as AFFECTIVE (or emotional) rather than PERCEPTUAL (e.g., visual). It is standardly taken to be visual, though...

if it is a matter of degree... then one might expect that... introversion and extroversion would similarly be differences in degree? one thing that is interesting to note is that... it might be that the medication (sedation) is (at least partly) responsible for the social withdrawal response to the anomalous experience.

just some rambellings... hope you don't mind my joining in...

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alexandra_k: the term 'mania' is operationalised and assessed according to what you might think of as 'extroverted' behaviours rather than assessed by the presence of verbal reports of pleasant, or spiritual experiences.

Pleasant? lol. The truth is seldom pleasant. The real question is, how far are you willing to go to discover it? I don't necessarily expect many readers to understand, but this is why I support the use of psychotropic medications as personally determined. No one is under any obligation to go beyond their own pain threshold, as they determine for themselves...

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<font color=191970>when I think of Heaven
deliver me
in a black-winged bird
I think of dyin'
Lay me down
In a field of flame and heather, and
render up my Body, into
~ The Burning Heart of God ~
in the belly of...
a black-winged bird

And I belong...
In the service of the Queen

~ Counting Crows ~

</center></font>

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See also: [*] Strange Days ~ Beautiful Midnight[*] Kundalini &amp; The Black Queen[*] Black Hole[*] In the Beginning[*] Center for the Story of the Universe[*] The Self-Aware Universe[*] The Relevance of Visionary Experience to Culture


just some rambellings... hope you don't mind my joining in...

Not at all. I'm sharing a few ramblings of my own.

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With thanks to my fellow travelers.

<center>~ Namaste ~

<img src=http://thefifthbody.homestead.com/files/mandala.jpeg></img>


Music of the Hour:

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