From personality disorders to the fact-value distinction

Louis Charland’s claim that DSM Cluster B personality disorders are moral rather than clinical kinds has recently triggered a lively debate. In order to deliver a reliable report of the latter, both (1) Charland’s arguments concerning the impossibility of identifying and treating personality disorders without applying a morally laden conceptual framework and (2) some critical responses they provoked are discussed. Then, in turn, the conceptual history of the notion of personality disorder is traced, including not only well-recognized contributions from (3) medical psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and DSM nosology, but also (4) an important, but often neglected, tradition of virtue and moral character. Finally, (5) the idea of a normatively neutral concept of personality disorder is scrutinized in the context of its logical dependence on the fact-value distinction. The latter dichotomy’s recent criticism, in particular, is employed to support Charland’s argument and to suggest that the normative character of personality disorders may go much deeper than this or that DSM formulation.