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Q. First let me begin to tell you my story. I married a man named Scott when I was 25 whom I became pregnant by while in college. Thinking that I was doing "the right thing," turned out to be a great mistake. Later on after I married him I quickly found out about his dysfunctional family. 

Scott's mother was the child of two alcoholic parents, and she had lived her life partially with them, than later to be taken in custody by her aunt. Scott's father, came from a dysfunctional family also. 

At age 50, his father found out that he had another sister that his mother had bee keeping a secret all of his life. His mother is a very mean lady (I won't get into all the details of this).

Scott has a younger brother that was very asthmatic as a child. He nearly died several times and was given most of the attention in the family. Not to include highly expensive medical bills, and the fact that his brother couldn't go outside and play. I can see that this brother got most of the attention and I think that Scott's childhood as a great influence on the way he is today.

For the two short years that I was married to Scott, I lived a life of pure hell. He was very, very orally abusive to me, and even to the point of physical abuse. I have never in my life had to deal with someone like him. He always told me, "You just don't know how to take me, you just don't know how to get back at me." He liked to play a lot of mind games.

I divorced him after two years because I just couldn't take any more of the mind games. We had a baby and I was trying to put myself through nursing school and work full time at the hospital.

While doing my psych rotation in nursing school a lot of things started to click with me as we studied personality disorders. I thought that a lot of the symptoms we were learning about were similar to ones that Scott had displayed. I couldn't put my finger on a certain type though. My psych nurse teacher said that here is a such diagnosis as "undifferentiated/undifferentiated ? personality disorder? Is this correct?

Scott displays a lot of symptoms as:  splitting, inability to follow a schedule, inability to follow structure, constantly changing his mind about the way he feels about things (he's very wishy-washy).

The most troubling thing about him is that he is so difficult to deal with.

After I graduated nursing school in May, I moved from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Savannah, GA to get away from him. Although we have 8 hours between us, he continues to harass me a lot. 

I am just wondering is there any literature that you know or or any advice that would help me deal with him. I haven't been able to really find anything on his type of personality disorder, but I am almost convinced that he has one.

A. I am not aware of an "undifferentiated personality disorder". There is such a thing as Undifferentiated Schizophrenia but based on your description this would not seem to apply. Also, your description of Scott, while rather vivid, does not translate easily into one of the diagnostic categories for personality disorders. Clearly, your description suggests there are many mental health issues that need to be addressed, but more information is needed for a clear diagnosis.

Copyright 1996 - 2002 Patty Pheil M.S.W. & Tim Pheil L.P.N. All Rights Reserved.

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