When you see someone quite at hate with himself or herself, you have someone with a masochistic personality disorder. Masochistic personality disorder is also known as self-defeating personality disorder. Experts have agonized over whether it is indeed a mental disorder, putting it in one version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and pulling it out in the next. Some of those who put it in may still be blaming themselves for it, while others may be wondering why they could not ensure it remained, though neither party – for the present – can officially claim to be suffering from masochistic personality disorder even if they’ve had it all their lives. In some senses, if it exists, MPD is a learning disorder, the masochist having learned to see himself – or herself – as being beneath love and beyond respect. MPD sufferers also often feel a need to be severely punished for not quite measuring up to the impossibly high standards set by themselves. And never quite achieve the very difficult goals they have originally aspired to attain. They even fail at ordinary but important tasks they need to get ahead at, perhaps to assure themselves they cannot meet even minimum standards. In fact, while they are perfectly good at helping others with a task, they cannot perform it if they themselves stand to gain.
Though otherwise normal, they thwart their own pleasure, and crank up their pain. They choose unpleasantness in all their relationships and do not look too kindly on any Good Samaritan who throws them a lifeline that will take them off to what they view as a strange situation, one that attributes them with some healthy self-worth. In fact, they do everything to thwart any attempt by well-meaning people to help them. Such self-flagellation, oddly enough, gives MPD sufferers some relief in that they feel they have been rightly punished for their worthlessness, their culpability in some imagined or magnified crime. Any success is cause for much soul-searching, guilt, self-directed rage, and deep despondency. People with MPD can even damage themselves in efforts to give other people help that they might not even need, and do all they can to bring anger, censure and contempt on themselves. The condition is associated with a high degree of extraversion but insufficient openness, extreme agreeableness and conscientiousness. Some theorize that it may be a result of children identifying with a bully or aggressor. But others suggest the condition is independent of bad experiences, abuse, and mood.