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Psychodynamic theory views personality a bit differently than both the DSM and Millon. Visually, it’s helpful to see how this ‘Personality Axis’ contains other axes that work together… And as always, we use ice cream to help make this complex topic more ‘digestible!’

As with all conceptualizations and theories, none are fully complete. Millon’s theory includes a continuum of severity, ranging from Style to Type to Disorder level. Millon’s expansive understanding of personality is absolutely invaluable both clinically and personally. And of course, we continue with the ice cream theme because – well, why not?

Personality disorders can be better understood using ice cream as an analogy. However, I must acknowledge my own bias, as I LOVE both ice cream and personality disorders! Whether you love or loathe either, your understanding of personality disorders will increase in a “flavorable” ;) manner after reading below!

Personality is everywhere. One of my favorite sayings is, “People are really people-ly.” The people-y-ness of humans is always there, and unfortunately, some of it is at a disorder level. Personality disorders are not going away. Some would even argue that as we become more inner-connected in our world, we’re only going to see more of them…

At the foundation, we want to understand the world, and our brains are wired to make categories. There’s so many facets of personality that in order to understand, we need to group things together into similarities and differences…