Personality disorders - living out the Dream?

Its easy to explain away the psychological signs of  being a womb twin survivor as " personality disorders".  Over the next few days I will take a look at some common personality disorders and consider them in depth in the light of the womb twin hypothesis.

The whole idea of "personality disorders" is vague and insubstantial, and subject to conjecture and disagreement, even between the experts involved.

Here is an article about the prevalence of different personality disorders,  written in  1992.

Among 452 subjects who were personally interviewed, 9.6% of the male and 10.3% of the female subjects were diagnosed as having at least one personality disorder. Compulsive, dependent, and passive—aggressive personality disorders were most frequent. Significant associations between Axis I disorders and personality disorders were observed; anxiety disorders with avoidant personality disorder, and affective disorders with borderline personality disorder. Due to the lower base rates and the reduced severity of individual disorders, these associations were less stringent than in clinical samples.

(If we recall that, thanks to the work of Dr Charles Boklage we know that at least 10% of the population  is a womb twin survivor,  then the fact that 10% of the population is diagnosed as having a personality disorder may be suggestive.  )

By December 2010 the list of these "disorders"  had radically changed, and in particular "Narcissistic personality disorder" was removed altogether from the list.


(My own thoughts on this are that narcissism is now so prevalent, it would seem to be a nonsense to suggest that people with these specific traits are "disordered". It is also possible that the experts chosen to be in the Work Group that had the job of redefining the DSM  may possess these traits, which are common among people who take a leadership role.) 

The idea that emerged from the redefinition was to replace the concept of "disorders' with the idea of core impairment in personality functioning and specific pathological personality traits.

 My own work, in creating the womb twin questionnaire, has been to discover the personality traits of womb twin survivors by gathering a list of commonly- used  personal statements.  This method is similar to that used by experts to discover to what extent people are "impaired in their personality" or whether they have certain "pathological personality traits."

I propose that these impairments and pathological  traits are no more than a perfectly normal response  to a rather unusual  prebirth situation - the loss of ones co-twin before birth.

Tomorrow I'll look a little more at Narcissism and demonstrate how this set of pathological personality traits perfectly reflects the psychological effects of living out a particular Dream of the Womb.

To find out more about your personality try this test:

Are you a womb twin survivor? Try this questionnaire.