Personality disorders are classified into three clusters. Cluster A includes odd and eccentric personality disorders, Cluster B includes dramatic, emotional, and erratic personality disorders, and Cluster C includes anxious and fearful personality disorders.

**Cluster A Personality Disorders**

**Paranoid Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This is usually manifested as:

* Unsubstantiated suspicions that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving them.
* Reluctance to confide in others due to fear that the information will be used against them.
* Reading hostile meanings into benign remarks or events.
* Persistent bearing of grudges.
* Recurrent suspicions regarding the fidelity of a spouse or partner.


**Schizoid Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. They almost always prefer solitary activities. They have few, if any, close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives. They often display emotional coldness, detachment, and flattened affect (the ability to respond emotionally to stimuli, events, memories, or thoughts).


**Schizotypal Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships, as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This includes odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"); unusual perceptual experiences; odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped); suspiciousness or paranoid ideation; inappropriate or constricted affect.


**Cluster B Personality Disorders**

**Antisocial Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years. This is often manifested as: frequent lying, use of aliases, conning others for personal profit or pleasure, or repeated acts that are grounds for arrest; frequent physical fights or assaults; recklessness regarding the safety of self or others; consistent irresponsibility; lack of remorse.


**Borderline Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This includes frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment; unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation; identity disturbance; impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating); recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior; affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days); chronic feelings of emptiness; inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger; transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.


**Histrionic Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This often involves being uncomfortable in situations in which they are not the center of attention; interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior; displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions; uses physical appearance to draw attention to themselves; shows theatrical speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail; is suggestible; considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are.


**Narcissistic Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This often involves having a grandiose sense of self-importance; is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love; believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions); requires excessive admiration; has a sense of entitlement; is interpersonally exploitative; lacks empathy; is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her; shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.


**Cluster C Personality Disorders**

**Avoidant Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This often involves avoiding occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact because of fears of criticism, disapproval, or rejection; is unwilling to get involved with people unless certain of being liked; is restrained within intimate relationships because of the fear of being shamed or ridiculed; is preoccupied with being criticized or rejected in social situations; is inhibited in new interpersonal situations because of feelings of inadequacy.


**Dependent Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of that leads to submissive and clinging behavior and fears of separation, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This involves difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others; needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of his or her life; has difficulty expressing disagreement with others because of fear of loss of support or approval; has difficulty initiating projects or doing things on his or her own (because of a lack of self-confidence in judgment or abilities rather than a lack of motivation or energy); goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others, to the point of volunteering to do things that are unpleasant; feels uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of exaggerated fears of being unable to care for himself or herself; urgently seeks another relationship as a source of care and support when a close relationship ends; is unrealistically preoccupied with fears of being left to take care of himself or herself.


**Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder**

This is a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. This involves preoccupation with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost; shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met); is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity); is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification); is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value; is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things; adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes; shows rigidity and stubbornness.