656 Personality Disorders
6. Inappropriate or constricted affect.
7. Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar.
8. Lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives.
9. Excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be as-
sociated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self.
B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of schizophrenia, a bipolar disorder or
depressive disorder with psychotic features, another psychotic disorder, or autism
spectrum disorder.
Note:  If criteria are met prior to the onset of schizophrenia, add “premorbid,” e.g., “schizo-
typal personality disorder (premorbid).”
Diagnostic Features
The essential feature of schizo typal personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of social
and interpersonal deficits ma rked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for,
close relationships as well as by cognitive or pe rceptual distortions and eccentricities of be-
havior. This pattern begins by early adulthoo d and is present in a variety of contexts.
Individuals with schizotypal personality disord er often have ideas of reference (i.e., in-
correct interpretations of casual incidents and external events as having a particular and
unusual meaning specifically for the person ) (Criterion A1). Th ese should be distin-
guished from delusions of reference, in whic h the beliefs are held with delusional convic-
tion. These individuals may be superstitiou s or preoccupied with paranormal phenomena
that are outside the norms of their subculture (Criterion A2). They may feel that they have
special powers to sense events before they happen or to read others’ thoughts. They may
believe that they have magical control over  others, which can be implemented directly