Psychology Today: Why You Need to Understand the Latest Personality Trait: Anankastia

New personality disorder research highlights the unique role of anankastia.

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“A new instrument called the PiCD (Personality Inventory for ICD-11) renames many of the FFM traits into terms more consistent with psychopathology. One doesn't translate easily from the FFM, however. This is the trait known as anankastia. Derived from the Greek word anankastikos, meaning “compulsion,” ICD used it as the basis for anankastic personality disorder, known in the DSM-5 as obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

As defined by the developers of the PiCD, “traits in this domain [anankastia] include perfectionism, perseveration, emotional and behavioral constraint, stubbornness, deliberativeness, orderliness, and concern with following rules and meeting obligations” (Oltmanns and Widiger, 2018). Although this set of qualities might remind you of conscientiousness, they don't neatly fit into that generally adaptive trait, nor even to its opposite. At its core, the authors go on to note, it involves "a narrow focus on the control of...behavior to ensure that things conform to the individual’s particularistic ideal."

The quality of anankastia seems to stand out in its own right, then, but it doesn't exist independently of other personality traits. A person high on this quality may have other adaptive qualities associated with their extreme rigidity and perfectionism. Furthermore, people aren't either "anankastic" or not. They may have varying degrees of this quality and, by extension, could potentially be moved up and down the scale through psychological interventions targeting this one maladaptive feature of their personalities. At a broader level, the Stricker et al. study reinforces the importance of thinking of people not as diagnostic labels but instead in terms of their personality strengths and weaknesses."

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Reflection: What positive and negative challenges can the introduction of a new personality trait, such as anankastic personality trait, create for the afflicted clients as well as for mental health professionals?

#Anankastia #PersonalityDisorder #ObsessiveCompulsive