Abstract
The relevance of a cultural approach to personality disorders. In this work we assert that personality disorders should be seen from a cultural viewpoint. First, we comment on how these disorders have acquired considerable institutional relevance since the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1980) incorporated them in Axis II, and how Theodore Millon was the most influential author regarding this incorporation. We then discuss our notions of historical society and person, the latter understood as a subject who resolves moral conflicts ethically in the bosom of the historical societies. We also propose that a psychological personality disorder consists of a dynamic of indefinite substitution of pseudoresolutions for ethically unresolved moral conflicts. We conclude that our cultural viewpoint has a twofold significance: On the one hand, it will lead to better understanding of the cultural background of current Psychopathology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychiatry and, on the other, it will enhance further comprehension of these disorders.
