‘Neurosis Vs Character Disorder’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 3

Neurotics want things to be good and wonderful, take it hard when things go wrong, and blame themselves for failures. Disordered characters take adversity in stride and blame everyone and everything else when their actions invite disastrous consequences.

Neurotics are generally uncomfortable with the “symptoms” of their illness and seek help on their own. While others may be upset with signs and symptoms of their disturbance, disordered characters like who they are and how they operate and rarely get into therapy unless pressured to do so.

Several intriguing comments and questions have been posted in reply to my earlier articles on character disturbance. In this post, I’d like to address some of these and the issues which readers have raised.

Whereas neurotics need and value insight in therapy, disordered characters are already keenly aware of their attitudes and behaviors that cause problems. They already see, they just disagree.

When I politely but firmly stopped accepting “I don’t know” for an answer from my character-disturbed clients, I was astonished at how easily I began to get more straightforward answers that actually made sense.