Personality disorder and parietal lobe dysfunction

Abstract

An inability to relate transitionally is a major feature of personality disorder. The developmental independence of transitional relatedness from verbal-symbolic growth, its orienting function, and the nature of its visual and tactile components support the conclusion that it is a function of the nondominant parietal lobe. Therefore it can be hypothesized that dysfunction of this area is the cerebral analogue of personality disorder. The fact that unawareness of illness ("anosognosia") in conjunction with grossly intact intellectual function is common to both personality disorder and minor parietal lobe dysfunction further supports this hypothesis.