Histriopath/Psychotrionic

Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) is usually a girl thing.  These are the attention seeking, lying, manipulative, Drama Queens of the world who inappropriately sexualize relationships, wallow in emotion and work you like a change machine.  

In action histrionics can look like psychopaths.  They invented emotional manipulation and can and will lie to get what they want.  Self-centered, they take in stride stunts that would induce normal people to crawl in caves to hide from the pain of embarrassment.  They take no responsibility, claim they are victims and blame others for the soap operas they script.  Outgoing, charming and seductive, histrionics can work a crowd.  They invented "love at first sight" which creates great theatrics. 

Their motto is "so much attention, so little time" as they gregariously bounce back to glad-handing after dusting themselves off from their latest train wreck.  Destroyed lives lay in their wake as they script anyone but themselves as the blame for all the bodies.  They talk loud to draw attention to themselves, kiss ass, flirt and flatter, and, subsequently, despite potential social skills, often are ostracized for uncomfortable/inappropriate behavior.    

But here is where histrionics part ways with psychopaths.  They are gullible, shallow, needy, make rash decisions, and either fake or exaggerate illnesses.  Psychopaths are not necessarily people of high intelligence, but they are less needy, less physically ill, cooler and less bumbling than histrionics.  Tougher somehow and less likely to feign regret.

But are these personality disorders the same thing, just dressed differently according to gender?

According to Personality Disorders in Modern Life by Theodore Millon, Carrie M. Millon, Sarah Meagher, Seth Grossman and Rowena Ramnath "Some theorists have hypothesized that histrionic personality disorder and anitsocial personality disorder (psychopathy) are actually 'expressions of the same latent disposition' (Hamburger, Lilienfeld, & Hogben, 1996, p. 52).

What we observe superficially are only the gender-stereotyped behaviors of the same underlying pathology. As Widiger and Spitzer (1991) argue, the differences we see in the distribution of personality disorders may be due to etiological factors such as different sex hormones that influence the final expression of pathology. Histrionic and antisocial personalities may be an example of such an effect. They may both represent expressions of the same pathology, and we are misconceptualizing them as two separate entities because their superficial expressions (the symptoms they outwardly express) are different."

What an interesting proposition, and what a break for bad girls.  The psychopath is more readily revealed; the histrionic more readily pitied.  While they both deliver a bite that kills.  If this is true we might see histrionics and psychopaths as caricatures of covert aggressive gender stereotypes.  Boys learn to win to get power.  Girls learn to seduce someone into taking care of them which is a different kind of power.  Each accomplishes the traditional gender objective through the same destructive means, just packaged according to gender.  You might say the psychopath is fake/dangerous masculine; the histrionic is fake/dangerous feminine.  We don't see the evil until it is too late because the delivery system suits our expectations.  The psychopath leads us into hell as a masculine force in control; the histrionic packs us a lunch of self-destruction as mother earth.  

I can see how gender roles might play out in the diagnostic process.  Here is an example.  In a probable diagnosis of histrionics, Dr. Joseph M. Carver at Counselling Resource evaluated some damaging traits packaged in stereotypical female behavior: 

"I have a 35 (could be 37: she changes her age frequently) year old sister (not by blood, but religion) that is a very skillful liar. In fact, she makes false statements and changes true stories into lies regularly. When anyone confronts her on the false statements made she starts cleaning the floor. Her children say that she is always cleaning the floors and walls for hours whenever she gets angry. If she is confronted by more than one person about false statements she pretends to begin bleeding from the nose, but I have yet to see blood."

We need to know more about character and mood disorders.  Gratefully a good body of literature is now available about psychopaths, and comprehension of motivation strains the imagination.  But our knowledge needs to go deeper to better decipher the overlap and co-morbidity of abusive personalities.  One can be strangled just as easily by a pink bow as by one that is blue.