is it heridetary?????

Does any one know if HPD is hereditary???

No one has directly pinpointed the cause of Histrionic Personality Disorder but in my extensive reading on the subject I have concluded a person can either be born with it or be genetically predisposed to developing it if raised in a horrible love and familial attention deficient environment.

They likely otherwise wouldn't develop it in a genetic predisposed scenario if they were raised by loving parents and had a good peer environment.

My HPD sister grew up in a loving home. We have great parents and she had good friends. However, when she started adolescence it became apparent that something was wrong. Now that we know about HPD, my dad told me that his sister had many of the same traits. She has never been treated, but she "burned out" years ago (before we were born, when she was around 40) and turned her life around. This leads me to believe that genetics has some part in HPD. Also, my sister's therapist said that she was born with it. I don't doubt that HPDs can be made (from abuse, etc) but I think genetics can have a hand in it as well.

This appears to be a bit of a paradox. If a childs parents were histrionic, than it will most likely be raised in a poor fashion. If the child then turns out to be Histrionic, was it because of the poor parenting provided because of its histrionic parents, or was it because of some Histrionic gene?

Pointless word-play aside, it is clearly a developed disorder. I'm not even going to explain.

This appears to be a bit of a paradox. If a childs parents were histrionic, than it will most likely be raised in a poor fashion. If the child then turns out to be Histrionic, was it because of the poor parenting provided because of its histrionic parents, or was it because of some Histrionic gene?

Pointless word-play aside, it is clearly a developed disorder. I'm not even going to explain.

Since genes don't change much in humans after a few generations and since in some families you can clearly see that the younger generation is psychologically healthier than say their grandparents or great grandparents. I'd have to say it's childrearing not genes that is responsible. To make this point a little clearer I''ll give you a brief family history. I suffer from moderate to severe anxiety was abused emotionally and spanked as a young child. Have spent time in therapy and have read many books and articles over the years to better understand myself and get over my problems.

My mother was abused emotionally and hit by her alcoholic mother and terrorized by her alcoholic schizophrenic brother growing up. She has never gotten any real therapy and denies ever being abused. She's told me numerous times she had a Leave it to Beaver childhood once had suicidal depression and has suffered from free floating anxiety, somatic symptoms, OCD traits and general dissatisfaction with life her entire adulthood. She's very threatened by therapists and psychology books doesn't think she has any real issues and is quite normal.

My grandmother was hit, emotionally and sexually abused as well as forced into being a child laborer when she was about 10 years old. Was a severe alcoholic who never had any healthy relationships and took bad care of herself. Always refused any help and blamed everyone else for her problems. I strongly suspect she had a personality disorder

As you can see in my family line starting from my grandmother and ending with me an improvement in childrearing has occured which subsequently has lead to an improvement in psychological health as well. That is not the result of better genes but of more loving and stable childrearing through the generations.

Although I see exactly what some of you are getting at in your posts, do consider that your experience and that of your family isn't the same as everyone else's. People can be born with PDs, or they can be formed through abuse, neglect, etc. if they have a predisposition to the disorder. This is hard to prove, but it has happened almost spontaneously in certain cases.

There are many mental health disorders that follow that line... mine is an example although it isn't a PD. I'll use it anyway, though. I went through a deep depression for several years in my late teens and early twenties. After I finally got help and discovered what was wrong with me (and got better ), my cousin told me, "oh yeah... sorry about that--we should have warned you." I had little contact with my birth father or his family growing up, but apparently it is a consistent pattern for the women in that family to go through depression in their twenties (usually late 20s, but a couple of people very close to me died in relatively quick succession in my late teens which brought it on early for me). They all have gone through it in one way or another, but it had nothing to do with the way I was raised since they weren't part of my upbringing.

PDs are much the same... a predisposition can be triggered by events, you can be abused to the point of developing one, or you can "just happen" (the most frightening choice of all). We don't want to believe that it's possible for this to happen for no reason because it takes away the control we think we have over our lives. Your child might have ASPD for no reason, or turn out with HPD just because... it totally sucks, I know. But it happens, and that's what all the books say. Sorry to be the party pooper.

I have to disagree. I have never read anything that gave evidence that personality disorders are genetic. The reason why some researchers say it could be the genes is because they study twins and find that one twin is anti social and the other is not. What they don't study is the other twin to see what maybe wrong with it or what could be wrong with the parents and how they raised both their children. They don't dig any further you can't assume that parents treat each child the same.

There are very few parents today that don't abuse and neglect their children in some way I have never met any parent when around their children that didn't do something that was either neglectful or abusive to the child. If you had asked these parents they would've said they never abused their children. Almost all parents just don't see that some of their childrearing practices starting from birth can be harmful to the child. Things that don't seem harmful to infants and young children but are done anyway are endless. All it takes is just one traumatizing incident to do damage. So by adulthood the average person has been neglected, abused, rejected, tortured, and put under severe stress countless times. Most people simply don't recognize that includin researchers so they chalk it up to genetics.

If anyone here has ever read an article, book, or sudy paper that says they have located a gene or genes that causes personality disorders or any other kind of psychological affliction I would love for you to post it on here to let me and everyone else know. I am a subscriber to the Journal of Psychohistory at Psychohistory.com they have documented for over 30 years what childhood was like in the distant past even when human beings lived in tribes by utilizing all kinds of evidence including archeological. What they have found based on the evidence is that we started out with mothers who killed our siblings were incestuous severely abusive and neglected us almost completely producing sadistic psychopathic cannibals. Over thousand of years some mothers slowly evolved their ability to love producing Schizoids and anti socials then Borderlines and Narcississts. Only recently 400 years or so have some mothers evolved enough to produce Neurotics. On the website their are two brilliant books Foundations of Psychohistory and The Emotional Life of Nations that explains much more in great detail. Lots of good evidence out there that debunks the whole genes theory.

Yep. That's me he's refering to below.

You were abused and neglected your mother was profoundly emotionally neglectful and didn't meet your real needs and used you to satisfy her needs. That's a classic upbringing of people who develop Borderline Personality Disorders which HPD is a part of.