If personality disorders are defined as opposing a healthy or genuine personality, how does one define such a healthy personality according to psychoanalysis?
(I realize healthy or genuine may not be adequate descriptions, but i think you get the idea…)
I’m not a psychoanalyst but can’t it be they are defined as opposing the state of consciuos realization of what normally sleeps unconscious or subconscious? i don;t understand myslef fully what I wanted to say, so take it with reserve. 
Who in heaven’s name is a psychoanalyst to define a healthy personality? 
Let me assure you that depression, schizophrenia, what they call personality disorders, etc., these are all ways of life. Different ways of life and living. Sure they’re not the norm. If there’s a majority of blacks in a place, should the minority of whites be labelled, abnormal? No! It remains a minority. Those whites do not become abnormal.
A healthy personality is not just what the norm is. You can say that a personality having depression is not the norm because majority do not have depression, but it is still a healthy personality. Don’t try to define otherwise just because the medical world sees only the norm and tries to define minority against that norm. That is wrong to do that.
For example, I did research on schizophrenia, read it at, books_galorealberta.tripod.com
I feel that schizophrenia is a way of life. Schizophrenics SHOULD NOT be drugged AT ALL. Similarly, depression is a way of life too, etc. Whatever…
Let me assure you, redefining the meaning of things in your own mind doesn’t make them so.
Maybe I’ll start calling my hamburgers hotdogs and scoff and anyone who disagrees with me. Ya, that would be clever.
That’s acctually a really great idea! Once I got into an argument with an Egyptian over whether a lime was a ‘lemon’ or a ‘lime’. What and how we lable things does matter.
The problem I have with calling mentall illnesses “ways of life” is that “way of life” connotes a choice to me.
We most defanitly have to treat personality disorders as disorders, to compare them to race is just plain wrong. It’s more accurate to compare mentall illness with physical illnesses like diabetes. If some one has diabetes, you don’t just ignore it, you treat them.
I’m with Pope Wanker on this one.
In a shared reality, the labels we use are everything. If I told you to shoot me with the “camera”, but in your world “camera” means “firearm”, I’d be very unhappy with you if I survived… which means you’d be very unhappy when I recover.
Labels are important, and that is why they are 99% of the law.
I think it needs to be understood that “personality disorders” when looked upon on the surface can apply to anyone, and I think may people look at them that way erroneously, but the symptoms aren’t essentially a “problem” unless the person cannot function in society because of such symptoms. The symptoms themself are not a “problem” until they become a problem. That is when such behaviors become “personality disorders.”
So what makes a personality “healthy” in terms of psychoanalysis? One that can function in society void of specific symptoms signifying an ailment hindering social adjustment. It all comes down to how well you can function in society.
I feel that you are missing my point. If i use the word undesired instead of unhealthy perhaps you see what i mean.
There is no doubt that these conditions are “ways of lives”. So are drug abuse and suicide, but it doesn’t really justify the fact that they are undesirable. Surely you can agree that there is such thing as a desired or ideal way of life for a person, and i really don’t see schizophrenia or depression to be a part of it at all. You seem to be caught up in looking at these things in terms of norms, but that has little relevance to my point. Furthermore, an individual with a healthy or desired lifestyle can be as nonconformistic as any marginalized mental state.
BJ,
Sorry I didn’t catch your post earlier, but I would like to respond to your comment.
First off, suicide is not a way of life. It’s actually quite the opposite LOL.
Second, disorders are not ways of life. I can’t tell what it trivializes more by saying that; the term “ways of life” or the disease itself.
Third, ways of life are choices. Mental disorders are not by choice. If I choose to be a moron, that’s my way of life. If I am a mongoloid, that’s a disorder.
Fourth, diseased minds are not nonconformist by nature. In fact, many of the most diseased minds spend a great deal of effort trying to hide their disease. To call a person with schizophrenia a nonconformist is like saying a person with a cleft foot walks to the beat of a different drummer. Of course they do… they’re limping.
Fifth, to say that schizophrenics should not be drugged is pure lunacy. Have you ever met a real schizophrenic? I mean a REAL one? I’m not talking schizoid or schizotypals here. I mean have you met someone who has flipped their lid so badly that reality is as malible as their imagination allows it to be?
A poor person is poor in life, has always been, but it is NOT his choice and yet it is his way of life. He would like to be rich, which again shows that being poor is not his choice and yet it’s his way of life!
In the same way, getting depressed, schizophrenic, homosexual etc., is not something you CHOOSE, but it still becomes a way of life with you.
This is arguable matter - preferably in a new thread - and frankly i would rather like to see some focus on my original query.
I did point out that the term healthy was perhaps somewhat misguiding. If you don’t find healthy to be an adequate description for the concept i’m looking for, feel free to use terms like desirable or genuine instead. I hope you people understand what i’m asking for anyway…
Arrey! You don’t even have the decency to ask a question simply and you keep changing the terms in the question AFTER people have replied and then YOU ARE SAYING that, “i would rather like to see some focus on my original query.”
What do you think we are your servants here? Your topic is ‘essence of a person’ and even though many have successfully answered your question in relation to that, you still keep ranting on that it hasn’t been answered. First you can’t even frame the question simply and stick to it and after that you don’t even have the time to try and understand what others are saying, just because you want to to sit like some couch potato and do nothing? And then YOU are saying that, ‘you’d like to see some focus on your original query?’
Here, I’ll give you some focus, see? starsstarsstars
Look, no one in life is perfect. At one time or another, each one of us will experience some personality disorder according to the person judging and not according to any norm. There is no norm because no one is perfect. According to psychiatrists, only a robot will be a normal healthy personality! Why? Because only a robot at NO TIME will show any anti-socialness, or maladaptiveness, etc. So, does this mean that we should all be judged against a robot?
So, as to your query, What gives? Here it is.
What is a healthy, desirable, genuine personality?
Answer: That of a robot, dear! 
That’s not true at all. Everyone doesn’t have disorders from a psychiatric perspective just as everyone doesn’t have cancer from an oncological perspective.
Again, when the symptoms become problematic, then they actually become “problems.” It is quite feasible that we all have a symptom or two that fall in line with a diagnosis from the DSM, but that doesn’t automatically equate to a disorder or even a non-healthy personality. It doesn’t mean anything. Using the medical model, it is just a format in which psychiatrists try to evaluate problematic behaviors. The symptoms can be quite normal for one person, but to another the same symptoms can be quite problematic. It all depends on how detrimental of an impact the symptoms have upon the individual.
A “robot” is not ideal or the only healthy form in the field of psychiatry. A socially functioning inidividual that doesn’t have problematic symptoms (again based on a medical-model perspective) is quite healthy.