Abstract

The major tenets of Millon’s biosocial learning theory of personality development were first outlined in his Modern Psychopathology (1969) text. Subsequent Millon Disorders of Personality volumes (1981, 1996) extrapolated on the core components of the theory: 1) three primary polarities from which, combinatorially, the recognized DSM and other personality disorders are derived; 2) eight clinical domains that form the classification system with all personality disorders exhibiting prototypal features within each domain; and 3) perpetuating processes—those behaviors, thought patterns, or affective expressions that a person exhibits in interactions with the outside world that reinforce his or her underlying perceptions, beliefs, and experiences. With the Toward a New Personology text (1990), the theory developed and expanded into an evolutionary model, and an entire system of thinking emerged that is most often referred to as the clinical science of personology. Millon (2004) articulated the components that would be necessary to forge a lasting clinical science. The structure of this entity would include a foundation in the universal laws of nature, a comprehensive explanatory psychological theory, a derivable taxonomic classification system, a set of theoretically guided and empirically grounded assessment instruments, and therapeutic interventions that logically follow from those test results and guide coordinated treatment efforts.