It defines personality disorders as:

A. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or more) of the following areas:

1. Cognition (i.e., ways of perceiving and interpreting self, other people, and events);

2. Affectivity (i.e., the range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of emotional response);

3. Interpersonal functioning;

4. Impulse control.

B. The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social situations.
C. The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
D. The pattern is stable and of long duration, and its onset can be traced back at least to adolescence or early adulthood.
E. The enduring pattern is not better accounted for as a manifestation or consequence of another mental disorder.
F. The enduring pattern is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., head trauma).

[American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR, Washington, 2000]

Each personality disorder has its own form of Narcissistic Supply:

1. HPD (Histrionic PD) - Sex, seduction, flirtation, romance, body;
2. NPD (Narcissistic PD) - Adulation, admiration;
3. BPD (Borderline PD) - Presence (they are terrified of abandonment);
4. AsPD (Antisocial PD) - Money, power, control, fun.

Borderlines, for instance, can be construed as NPDs with an overwhelming fear of abandonment. They are careful not to abuse people. They DO care deeply about not hurting others - but for the selfish motivation of avoiding rejection. Borderlines depend on other people for emotional sustenance. A drug addict is unlikely to pick up a fight with his pusher. But Borderlines also have deficient impulse control, as do Antisocials. Hence their emotional liability, erratic behaviour, and the abuse they do heap on their nearest and dearest.

next: Depression and the Narcissist