Etiology of personality disorders: A commentary on Dr. Parker's tripartite model

The review of the etiology of personality disorders by Dr. Gordon Parker is critically evaluated. Personality development is considered as a complex adaptive system that is hierarchically self-organizing. This involves three interactive phases, beginning with interactions among emotion-based dimensions of temperament in infancy, next socially molded by the emergence of character or concepts about self-object relationships, and finally vulnerability to psychopathology as a result of modulation of experience by both emotion-based temperament and concept-based character. Accordingly, functional impairment is a predictable property of temperament and character, rather than an independent component of personality disorder as suggested by Parker.