Theodore Millon
Born(1928-08-18)August 18, 1928
Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Died29 January 2014(2014-01-29) (aged 85)
Greenville, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican

Theodore Millon (/mɪˈlɒn/)[1] (August 18, 1928 – January 29, 2014) was an American psychologist known for his work on personality disorders. He founded the Journal of Personality Disorders and was the inaugural president of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. In 2008 he was awarded the Gold Medal Award For Life Achievement in the Application of Psychology by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Foundation named the "Theodore Millon Award in Personality Psychology" after him. Millon developed the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, worked on the diagnostic criteria for passive-aggressive personality disorder, worked on editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and developed subtypes of a variety of personality disorders.

Biography

Millon was born in Brooklyn in 1928, the only child of immigrant Jewish parents from Lithuania and Poland.[2] His 19th-century ancestors came from the town of Valozhyn, then a part of the Russian Empire.[3]: 309  He studied psychology, physics, and philosophy as an undergraduate at the City College of New York and went on to receive his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 1954, with a dissertation on "the authoritarian personality."[4]

Millon was a member of the board of trustees of Allentown State Hospital, a large Pennsylvania psychiatric hospital for 15 years. Shortly thereafter he became the founding editor of the Journal of Personality Disorders and the inaugural president of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. He was Professor Emeritus at Harvard Medical School and the University of Miami.[5]

In 2008, Millon was awarded the Gold Medal Award For Life Achievement in the Application of Psychology by the American Psychological Association.[6] The American Psychological Foundation presents an award named after Millon, known as the "Theodore Millon Award in Personality Psychology," to honor outstanding psychologists engaged in "advancing the science of personality psychology including the areas of personology, personality theory, personality disorders, and personality measurement."[7]

Theoretical work

Millon has written numerous popular works on personality, developed diagnostic questionnaire tools such as the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, and contributed to the development of earlier versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Among other diagnoses, Millon advocated for an expanded version of passive aggressive personality disorder, which he termed 'negativistic' personality disorder and argued could be diagnosed by criteria such as "expresses envy and resentment toward those apparently more fortunate" and "claims to be luckless, ill-starred, and jinxed in life; personal content is more a matter of whining and grumbling than of feeling forlorn and despairing" (APA, 1991, R17). Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder was expanded somewhat as an official diagnosis in the DSM-III-R but then relegated to the appendix of DSM-IV, tentatively renamed 'Passive-Aggressive (Negativistic) Personality Disorder'.[8]

Millon's personality disorder subtypes

Millon devised a set of subtypes for each of the DSM personality disorders:[9][10]

Books

See also

References

  1. ^ Dr. Theodore Millon on the Millon Inventories and field of personality, archived from the original on 2021-12-14, retrieved 2019-09-22
  2. ^ "Test Developer Profiles — Theodore Millon, Ph.D., D.Sc". McGraw-Hill. 2001. Retrieved January 22, 2010.
  3. ^ Kinder, Bill N.; Strack, Stephen (2006). Pioneers of personality science: autobiographical perspectives. New York: Springer Pub. Co. ISBN 978-0-8261-3205-5.
  4. ^ Schubert, Siri (2007). "Seeing the Person in the Patient". Scientific American Mind. 18 (3): 50–53. doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0607-50. ISSN 1555-2284. JSTOR 24939645.
  5. ^ Browning, Julie (October 29, 2005). "Theodore Millon – Grandfather of Personality Theory". All in the Mind. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved January 22, 2010.
  6. ^ No Authorship Indicated (2008). "Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Application of Psychology". The American Psychologist. 63 (5): 345–7. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.63.5.345. ISSN 0003-066X. PMID 18665667. Retrieved January 22, 2010.
  7. ^ "Theodore Millon Award in Personality Psychology". American Psychological Association. 2010. Retrieved January 22, 2010.
  8. ^ Lane, C. (1 February 2009). "The Surprising History of Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder" (PDF). Theory & Psychology. 19 (1): 55–70. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.532.5027. doi:10.1177/0959354308101419. S2CID 147019317.
  9. ^ Millon, Theodore; Carrie M. Millon; Seth Grossman; Sarah Meagher; Rowena Ramnath (2004). Personality Disorders in Modern Life. John Wiley and Sons. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-471-23734-1.
  10. ^ Millon, Theodore (2006). "Personality Subtypes Summary". The Official Website for Theodore Millon, Ph.D., D.Sc. DICANDRIEN, Inc. Retrieved January 22, 2010.
  11. ^ Paul Babiak, Robert D. Hare (2007). Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.
  12. ^ Millon, Theodore (1995). Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond.

Sources

External links

Authority control databases
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