Personality disorders.

Introduction: The Development of the Concept of Personality Disorders The concept of personality disorder dates back to ancient times. In the 5th century B.C., Hippocrates put forward the humoral hypothesis. He defined two typologies: a short and sturdy stature called habitus apolepticus, and a tall and thin stature called habitus phthysicus. He later hypothesized that there are four types of liquids (humor), in the body, and the different temperaments stem from varying distributions of these liquids. These humors are black bile (melancholic mood), yellow bile (choleric habitus) , phlegm (phlegmatic mood), and blood (sanguine mood). The basis of this formulation is the suggestion that personality is a structure to be evaluated by a dimensional approach. Every human being has a mixture of these four liquids that determine the personality type ( Lion, 1982; Tyrer and Ferguson, 1988)