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Just a random curiosity. Was it maybe from the first ancient ASPD/Sociopath? Or maybe just a result of modernization and civilizations evolved? Just curious if anyone else has ever thought about this or if there’s even any historical knowledge or theories available.

What is cluster B?
Zen606

"Malleus maleficarum,

lists various symptoms similar to dsm5 diagnostic criteria back in the 1400s

My personal opinion is that its been around as long as man. If you look at historical figures you can see PDs in a lot of them. Ghengis khan, Henry VIII, Hitler, Julius Caesar etc.

Maybe they developed/ evolved to prosper during certain times. A ruthless leader (APD) would pass on their genes more prevalently. A BPD woman would have more success breeding, An NPD individual would be more successful. PDs would give a person an advantage in certain areas.

When the Vikings raided it wasn't the kind mild mannered individuals they sent. It was the aggressive, ruthless ones. They raped and pillaged and passed on their genes. Britain itself has always been seen as an aggressive nation throughout history. Could this be to do with the fact that it has been invaded by the romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans and the Vikings to name but a few.

That’s an interesting take enlighten me! These disorders or behaviors can almost be viewed as modern day barbarism.

Hey guys, this is a high level board... .we don't want to be making things up. When the conversation shifts to explaining human nature with Hitler as a benchmark, its a sure bet the conversation is off the mark.  There is too much of that on the web already. As a test, apply this discussion's logic to musical geniuses. Or star athletes?  Where did they come from?   *)

The concept of human personality dimensions and personality types has been around since antiquity. People have different temperament. It's the basis or the Carl Yungs work and, later, the Meyers-Briggs tools that many of us have participated in.

We have an articles on the front page of our website about how "personality" is made up of many types and within the types their are variations in intensity and some of it is heritable and some do to the family style and some is do to the environment... .

 

Cluster B includes antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders.
(DSM5)

I don't recall coming across a historical take on it. There's quite a nice discussion about how BPD relates to modern society by Kreisman (2010, link (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56740.0)).

"Each culture probably needs its own scapegoats as expressions of society’s ills. Just as the hysterics of Freud’s day exemplified the sexual repression of that era, the borderline, whose identity is split into many pieces, represents the fracturing of stable units in our society." (Louis Sass in Kreisman 2010 op cit)

There's an interesting discussion about an individual's sense of stability and roles of social media in it. I liked how he connected the role of the family in explaining origins of nature v nuture type of stuff. I think that's consistent with what Skip's reminded everyone here:
I'd just recall that if you're in recovery, compassion can be to avoid jumping into the blame game if you discover factor X or factor Y playing a role in how a given ex was.

I hope you're finding peace.

Thank you for responding to my query re:cluster B.

Mental illness has been attributed to the social environment. Look at Thomas Szasz' The myth of mental illness -- he has some interesting ideas about development and its relation to social rules.

I think it's good to have this discussion. Although we are all healing from our encounters  with the BPD/trait individual and I am aware that this is the purpose of the forum, exploring the foundation of personality disorders can be part of this learning experience.

Zen606  |iiii

Genetically speaking there are sound reasons for all the aberrations of the mental state normally encountered,
(and they are fairly uniformly found in extremely diverse social and cultural enviroments and time frames)
Asthetically speaking some of them are distressing and the means to normalize such behaviors ( all the way up to execution ) are also normal,

Nietzsche in beyond good and evil was perhaps to first to explore this in depth,

Basically it is normal for people to be crazy and for people to think there crazy, if that makes sense.

I personally think that if PDs didn't exist we would still be living in caves. Einstein, Da Vinci, Tesla, Galileo to name but a few would probably all be diagnosable for PDs. Then we have the artists Van Gogh, Goya, Donatello, Munch, Picasso and Dali. Musicians are too numerous to list.

Even though their personal lives might have been tumultuous their influence has improved the world and helped us evolve.

JNChell. I wasn't trying to compare PDs to modern day barbarianism just show that there is historical evidence that they have existed for a while and a possible genetic link to them spreading. Unfortunately historical records focus on conquerors and are written by them hence the references to the more barbaric side.

The risk reward ratio has shifted dramatically in the past hundred years the impact of one individual can effect the whole world, its downright scary.