Hervey M. Cleckleys 1941 text, The Mask of Sanity, based on his personal categorization of similarities he noted in some prisoners, marked the start of the modern clinical conception of psychopathy and its popularist usage.Towards the mid 20th century, psychoanalytic theories were coming to the fore based on work from the turn of the century being popularized by Sigmund Freud and others. This included the concept of character disorders, which were seen as enduring problems linked not to specific symptoms but to pervasive internal conflicts or derailments of normal childhood development. These were often understood as weaknesses of character or willful deviance, and were distinguished from neurosis or psychosis. The term borderline stems from a belief some individuals were functioning on the edge of those two categories, and a number of the other personality disorder categories were also heavily influenced by this approach, including dependent, obsessive–compulsive and histrionic, the latter starting off as a conversion symptom of hysteria particularly associated with women, then a hysterical personality, then renamed histrionic personality disorder in later versions of the DSM. A passive aggressive style was defined clinically by Colonel William Menninger during World War II in the context of mens reactions to military compliance, which would later be referenced as a personality disorder in the DSM. Otto Kernberg was influential with regard to the concepts of borderline and narcissistic personalities later incorporated in 1980 as disorders into the DSM. Meanwhile, a more general personality psychology had been developing in academia and to some extent clinically.
The patient is asked to answer questions, and depending on their answers, the trained interviewer tries to code what their responses were. This process is fairly time-consuming. Abbreviations used: PPD – Paranoid Personality Disorder, SzPD – Schizoid Personality Disorder, StPD – Schizotypal Personality Disorder, ASPD – Antisocial Personality Disorder, BPD – Borderline Personality Disorder, HPD – Histrionic Personality Disorder, NPD – Narcissistic Personality Disorder, AvPD – Avoidant Personality Disorder, DPD – Dependent Personality Disorder, OCPD – Obsessive–Compulsive Personality Disorder, PAPD – Passive–Aggressive Personality Disorder, DpPD – Depressive Personality Disorder, SDPD – Self-Defeating Personality Disorder, SaPD – Sadistic Personality Disorder, and n/a – not available. As of 2002, there were over fifty published studies relating the five factor model (FFM) to personality disorders. Since that time, quite a number of additional studies have expanded on this research base and provided further empirical support for understanding the DSM personality disorders in terms of the FFM domains. In her seminal review of the personality disorder literature published in 2007, Lee Anna Clark asserted that "the five-factor model of personality is widely accepted as representing the higher-order structure of both normal and abnormal personality traits".The five factor model has been shown to significantly predict all 10 personality disorder symptoms and outperform the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) in the prediction of borderline, avoidant, and dependent personality disorder symptoms.Research results examining the relationships between the FFM and each of the ten DSM personality disorder diagnostic categories are widely available.