| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
Avoidant personality disorder usually is first noticed in early adulthood, and is associated with rejection during childhood by parents and peers. Whether the rejection is due to the extreme interpersonal monitoring attributed to people with the disorder is still an open question.
The DSM-IV-TR, a widely used manual for diagnosing mental disorders (see also: DSM cautionary statement), defines avoidant personality disorder as 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, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
Research suggests that people with avoidant personality disorder, in common with social phobics, excessively monitor their own internal reactions when they are involved in social interaction. However, unlike social phobics they also excessively monitor the reactions of the people with whom they are interacting. The extreme tension created by this monitoring may account for the hesitant speech and taciturnity of many people with avoidant personality disorder. They are so preoccupied with monitoring themselves and others that producing fluent speech is difficult.
Kantor, M. (1993). Distancing: A guide to avoidance and avoidant personality disorder. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers.