Disordered characters don’t feel shame like neurotics do.  Although pop psychology has given shame a bad name, the ability to feel it is a mark of good character.  I wrote recently about how neurotic individuals and disturbed characters differ greatly on the issue of guilt.  Guilt and shame are related.  Guilt is the bad feeling we get [...]

People often get manipulated because they misjudge the character of their manipulator.  We have a tendency to want to see everyone else as basically pretty much like us.  We want to think that they think the same way, care about the same things, and feel the same way we do.  But individuals with disturbed characters [...]

Neurotics have well-developed and overactive consciences (i.e. superegos), whereas disordered characters have consciences that are under-developed and impaired.  Neurotics have a huge sense of right and wrong and always want to do the right thing.  They often set standards for themselves that are so high they’re virtually impossible to meet, causing themselves a significant amount of [...]

                  Neurotics are very different from individuals with a character disorder on the dimension of anxiety.  Anxiety is that primal emotion (i.e. fear response) that we get when we feel threatened in some way.  When our fear is attached to a specific, identifiable circumstance, such as being in a room filled with a lot of [...]

Recently I came upon a blog post by “Jennifer” who rightfully complained that parents or separated or divorced partners will frequently use children as pawns in their covert wars with one another.  She wrote: Some parents get blinded by their own emotions and stuff going on in their lives that they fail to see the [...]