Millon's Normal Personality Styles and Dimensions

Abstract

Millon's normal personality styles and dimensions emanate from the same evolutionary model he developed to explain personality pathology. For him, normal and abnormal personality lie along a continuum with no sharp demarcation to distinguish the two. The major difference is that normal individuals demonstrate adaptive flexibility in responding to their environment, whereas disordered persons exhibit rigid and maladaptive behavior. In this article, I present a historical introduction to Millon's ideas on normality, descriptions of his normal personality styles and dimensions, up-to-date empirical findings, and avenues for future research. I conclude that, with additional validity data, Millon's model of normal personality may be suitable for an expanded Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) Axis II that allows for diagnosis of normal personality types when a complete personality disorder syndrome is absent.