Ted displays a history of symptoms that are consistent with Antisocial Personality Disorder with some narcissistic behavior. The essential features of a personality disorder are impairments in personality, including both self (ways of perceiving and interpreting self) and interpersonal functioning (empathy for others and appropriate emotional responses) and pathological personality traits (poor impulse control). The onset of these enduring impairments can usually be traced back to adolescence. Antisocial personality disorder is a mental health condition in which a person has a long-term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others. This behavior is often criminal. Ted’s unhealthy interpersonal interactions and disturbed thought processes are not due to drugs, medication, or a medical condition. …show more content…
After rejection by his first love/sexual partner, Ted showed poor impulse control and risk-taking behavior when he began stealing and did not feel guilt or remorse for having taken things from others. Ted also learned of the deception by his mother (pretending to be his sister) reinforcing his feelings of humiliation at the hands of women. According to psychodynamic theory, never having seen how a healthy relationship operates, Ted’s manipulation of his first girlfriend (encouraging her to fall in love with him in order to cruelly break up with her to exact revenge for how he had been treated) is a defense mechanism to help him cope with his feelings of helplessness and insecurity from when he was a child. Typical of one with antisocial personality disorder, he wants to make others feel the same sense of powerlessness and victimization that he felt when he was growing up. It is not surprising that Ted would choose young women as targets of his anger and aggression since both his young mother and first girlfriend caused him to feel