Personality Pattern Library
Twelve personality pattern cards written in plain, warm language — describing how each pattern feels from the inside, not a list of symptoms. Grounded in empirical personality and psychopathology research.
Get Full AccessThe 12 Personality Patterns
Each card describes the inner experience, relational style, self-regulation tendencies, and underlying motivational structure of a personality pattern — drawing on the Five Factor Model, structural models of personality organization, and interpersonal circumplex theory.
Obsessive-Compulsive
Organized around control, precision, and duty. The inner experience is one of persistent doubt — the worry that good enough is never quite good enough.
C-dominant · High conscientiousnessNarcissistic
Organized around self-esteem regulation and entitlement. Apparent self-assurance often conceals brittle vulnerability to criticism and perceived slights.
Agency-dominant · Low agreeablenessBorderline
Organized around identity diffusion and intense affective reactivity. Relationships oscillate between idealization and devaluation; the self-concept is unstable.
High neuroticism · Unstable attachmentHistrionic
Organized around attention and approval-seeking. Emotionally expressive and socially engaging, with difficulty sustaining depth beyond the dramatic register.
High extraversion · Communion-dominantSchizoid
Organized around emotional detachment and self-sufficiency. Social withdrawal is not primarily fear-based — it reflects a genuine low need for connection.
Low E · Low communionAvoidant
Organized around shame sensitivity and fear of humiliation. Social withdrawal is anxiety-driven — the person wants connection but expects rejection.
High N · Anxious attachmentDependent
Organized around a need for caregiving and reassurance. Submission and compliance are strategies to preserve the relationship and ward off abandonment.
Submissive · Anxious-preoccupiedParanoid
Organized around vigilance and threat detection. Others’ motives are presumed hostile; any ambiguous interpersonal cue is interpreted through a suspicious lens.
Hostile-dominant · Low trustAntisocial
Organized around power, exploitation, and callousness. Empathic concern is absent or instrumental; rules are frameworks to outmaneuver, not obligations to internalize.
Antagonistic · Low agreeablenessDepressive
Organized around self-criticism, loss, and pessimism. The inner monologue tends toward culpability and the sense that good outcomes are undeserved.
High N · Introjective styleMasochistic
Organized around self-defeat and unconscious guilt. Success is unconsciously felt to be dangerous; relationships are structured to reproduce suffering.
Self-defeating · Superego dynamicsSadistic
Organized around control through intimidation and humiliation. Others’ distress is not merely tolerated — it is instrumentalized as evidence of dominance.
Hostile-dominant · Low communionFull card descriptions — including dynamic formulation, common defenses, interpersonal pull, and treatment implications — are available with a registered account.
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