**8. Personal classification system**

If I was to plan an assessment programme in child psychiatry again from the start, I would assess the following dimensions: social reciprocity, pragmatic

**9**

*The Future of Psychiatry and Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Paradigm Shift*

language, oppositionality, working memory, delinquency, attention, impulsivity, activity, capacity to read non-verbal behaviour, preservation of sameness and

A not insignificant number of personality disorders are developmental disorders. This will require further research. One example is schizoid personality disorder. Another is paranoid personality disorder and, another, borderline personality disorder. Obsessive compulsive personality disorder could be also included in this group. There's quite a good case for narcissistic personality disorder to be included. An older term, anankastic personality disorder [39], could also be included. Many individuals with psychopathy have a developmental disorder, and a group of these have been called criminal autistic psychopathy [40]. There is a clear overlap between psychopathy and autism spectrum disorders. This is despite some research showing that persons with psychopathy have good theory of mind skills, while persons with autism don't. Nevertheless, more recent research has shown that particularly persons with high IQ can have good theory of mind skills while, at the

**10. Cognitive empathy and theory of mind: automatic perspective taking**

Blair [41] stated that "cognitive empathy or theory of mind is intact in individuals with psychopathy". These ideas have been very seriously undermined by Drayton et al. [42] in relation to automatic perspective taking. Previous research did not take the complexity of cognitive empathy into account, and this led to serious misunderstandings of cognitive empathy. Drayton et al. [42] point out that "automatic theory of mind processes are engaged when an individual unintentionally represents the perspective of another person," also called "altercentric interference". Drayton et al. [42] suggest that "psychopathic individuals have a diminished propensity to automatically think from another's perspective, which may be the cognitive root of their deficits in social functioning and moral behaviour". Drayton et al. [42] raise, for this author, the possible failure of previous research on theory of mind and psychopathy, failing "to tap into a critical component of normal theory of mind processing; or tendency to take other's perspective automatically". Drayton et al. [42] defined "automatic theory of mind processes" as an individual representing "the thoughts and feelings of another person without intending to do so". They also point out that psychopathic individuals have a previously unobserved cognitive deficit that might explain their patterns of destructive and anti-social behaviour, that is, … failure "to automatically take the perspective of others, but can deliberately (controlled), take the perspective of others". These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals have the ability to take the perspective of others but lack the propensity to do so. It seems they can pass theory of mind tasks in the research situation but fail to do so in the real world situation. This is one of the endless problems of laboratory research not translating into the "real world," that is, the clinical world. This lack of generalisation can be a serious flaw in academic psychological research. Drayton et al. [42] note that "psychopathic individuals do show deficits in their ability to understand what others are feeling but this capacity to represent other feelings appears to be distinct from capacity to represent what others see and believe". They also point out that "psychopathic individuals appear to represent other's perspective in a relatively

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88540*

This would be a transdiagnostic approach.

**9. Personality disorder as a developmental disorder**

fixations.

same time, having autism.
