Your personality stays the same throughout your life. This is only half true. Your basic personality structure does stay more or less the same, but it can be knocked off course by child abuse, neglect, illness and severe stress. Sometimes these changes persist, especially after the severe trauma of war or if they occur early in life when personality is developing.
For the average person, tiptoeing through life with the occasional hiccup and intermittent joys, personality persists in its basic structure. When we approach old age there are natural changes in lifestyle that have an impact on personality. We do less, our horizons become smaller, relationships usually become fewer. In our own research we have found that, on the one hand, obsessional symptoms, especially rigidity and detachment, become more pronounced than they were earlier in life. On the other hand, aggression and impulsive behaviour become less marked. Are these changes real personality ones or are they just a natural accompaniment to getting old? I suspect they are a mixture of both. The average 75-year-old ex-boxer does not relish getting into fist fights, but does not like his daily routine to be changed repeatedly. The sociable whist-drive organizer and charity fundraiser suffers a steady loss of fellow extroverts as she gets into her eighties, downsizes to a cheerless flat and steadily loses her social skills. She is now regarded as a cranky old woman who suffers fools poorly and is increasingly isolated.
The basic personality may still be identifiable, but it only comes through in glimpses, and it is seen as different by others. When Dylan Thomas wrote about his ageing father dying peacefully without fighting back against the depredations of senility, he was expressing a young man’s frustration with the passivity and acceptance of an old man gradually slipping into oblivion. ‘Why don’t you fight in the way you used to, Dad; what has changed?’ Age has changed everything, and part of the old personality has probably withered too.
We need to know a lot more about change in personality before we can provide remedies. In the new classification of personality disorder there is a condition called ‘late-onset personality disorder’ that arises later in life. This can come about in different ways. A man who has always been somewhat difficult and irritable but has seldom been involved in conflict because his tolerant and understanding wife has accommodated and covered up his whims is left alone and rudderless when his wife suddenly dies. All his underlying personality difficulties are now exposed and friends and relatives see an irascible, confrontational and unpleasant man whom they claim never to have encountered before. But they have, if only in a minor form, because until this time his aberrations have been compensated.
Personality and illness
Illness may also alter personality. When people develop dementia it is not only brain power that diminishes but personality changes also. This is not surprising, as the seat of personality is also in the brain, but it alters in very many ways. Some people become excessively aggressive and irritable – it is not surprising that training in coping with violence is mandatory for care workers – whereas others appear to retreat into apathy and disinterest with none of their former personality features on show. Yet others seem to return to the personalities of their childhood as though they were retreating in time and cheating the clock. But the behaviours of dementia are complex and should not commonly be attributed to personality. As mentioned earlier, the recognition of environmental factors and their reversal by nidotherapy may change difficult behaviours into pleasant ones, so it is a mistake to assume that trouble will persist no matter what you do.
Chronic illness, in any form, is also a jolt to personality. An active sportsman cut down by motor neurone disease, a knitwear enthusiast with swollen fingers handicapped by rheumatoid arthritis, a lifelong birdwatcher who goes blind – all have to make big adjustments to their lives. This is when personality strengths such as determination and persistence can come into play and make a virtue out of disability. You only have to see the success of the Invictus Games for war veterans to realize the virtues of new horizons never previously seen.
For reasons based on hope and guesswork rather than evidence, all classifications of personality disorder conclude there is less manifestation of disordered behaviour with advancing age. You can tell from the above account that this is not exactly correct. There are dozens of ways in which personality can change, some positive and some not, but they are not entirely unpredictable. Personality is not a wild animal that goes its own way – it keeps its essentials but can be guided and kept under control.
We cannot forget the jesters in the pack, borderline disorder and psychopathy. Do these change too over time? There are many who would dearly like to know the answer, but, as usual, the jester plays tricks again. The good news is that many of the features of the disorder do disappear over time. Mary Zanarini, working at McLean Hospital and the University of Harvard in the USA, has carried out a long-term follow-up: after 16 years, 9 out of 10 people previously diagnosed could no longer be diagnosed as personality disordered. The bad news is that fewer of them had recovered and more had experienced relapses than with other personality disorders.1 This mixture of hope and despair is difficult to come to terms with. I only hope we will be able to explain why before too long.
I come back to the beginning of this book. I am now in my seventies and am comfortable with my personality difficulty. I still blurt out when I should be quiet, I still get annoyed by petty authority and my life is still overshadowed unduly by the work ethic. But these are under control and I know how to lessen them. I hope that most of you also are feeling the same way or, if not, can see ways forward to achieving this goal. Using our personality strengths and accepting that at least some of the difficulties we may have with other people are generated by us alone are the keys to understanding. The title of this book can then be changed. There is no longer a ‘beast within’; it is just a pussycat.