Personality and Sexual Well-Being
By:
THEODORE MILLON and
Seth Grossman
Carrie Millon
Sarah Meagher
Rowena Ramnath
Histrionic
personalities demonstrate, usually in a mildly caricatured form, what our
society fosters and admires in its members: to be popular, extroverted,
attractive, and sociable. Interpersonally, they use seductive maneuvers to
attract the attention they crave.
But do they follow through and sustain that initial impression?
Are they good lovers?
Apparently,
the answer is NO
Apt
and Hurlbert (1994) studied a sample of women who had been diagnosed as
histrionic using the MCMI-II and compared them to a matched sample of other non-histrionic
women in a series of measures of sexual behaviors and attitudes.
Histrionic
women were found to have;
·
significantly
lower sexual assertiveness,
·
greater
eroto-phobic attitudes toward sex,
·
lower
self-esteem,
·
and
greater marital dissatisfaction;
They
were found to be more preoccupied with sexual thoughts; and they reported
having lower sexual desire and more sexual boredom.
They
also reported a greater incidence of orgasmic dysfunction and indicated a
greater likelihood of entering into an extramarital affair.
Despite
such negative findings, histrionics reported greater sexual self-esteem.
Although
the results of this particular study referred to histrionic women, there is no reason
to believe that histrionic men are any more sexually competent. In fact, a
similar pattern of high sexual self-esteem and difficulties has been identified
for males and labeled sexual narcissism by the same authors (Hurlbert &
Apt, 1991).
References
Personality Disorders in Modern Life,
second edition, 2000, 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Read Also
Histrionic Personality Disorder, Case vignette (1)
Histrionic Personality Disorder, Case vignette (2)
Histrionic Personality Disorder, Case vignette (3)
Who Will Cheat?
Histrionic Personality Disorder, Case vignette (2)
Histrionic Personality Disorder, Case vignette (3)
Who Will Cheat?
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