A label can make a pattern sound like a permanent identity. A dimensional view asks more useful questions: how much, in which situations, with what effect — and what might change?
By Isabella Becker · 11 min read
English editorial edition of Isabella Becker’s Portuguese essay, translated and adapted for international readers. The article presents Virtology’s interpretation; its specific theoretical mechanisms should be distinguished from independently established clinical findings.
For a long time, popular conversations about personality have sounded like an exercise in assigning boxes. This person “is” one thing; that person “is” another. A description becomes a label, and the label begins to explain everything.
Yet people rarely fit neatly inside a single description. The same person can respond differently across relationships, demands and stages of life. Naming a pattern may help, but it does not answer every question about how to help the person living with it.
This essay considers a dimensional perspective and what Eduardo Casarotto’s Virtology proposes to add. It is not an invitation to diagnose yourself or to discard an existing diagnosis. A clinical diagnosis can be useful; treating it as the entirety of a person is the problem.
Become an identity. “I am anxious” starts organizing a whole life around a description that may have begun with particular situations.
Close an inquiry. Once the pattern has a name, people stop asking when it appears, what sustains it or what helps.
Make change feel impossible. A category can sound permanent when it is heard as an essence rather than a clinical description.
Erase context. Differences between settings are lost in one general statement.
Become family inheritance. “He has always been like that” is repeated until nobody remembers the particular events behind it.
Remove the middle ground. A yes-or-no label can obscure meaningful differences in degree, impact and available support.
None of these effects is inevitable. Used well, diagnosis can open access to treatment, language and understanding. The concern is what happens when a useful description becomes a sentence about someone's identity.
From a label to a degree
A dimensional account asks how strongly a tendency appears, in what context, and how it affects functioning. Virtology welcomes that kind of question while interpreting it through its own architecture of temperament, needs, defenses and virtues.
The source is explicit about the relationship: resonance, not adoption. Casarotto does not simply take an official set of trait domains and give them new names. He offers a separate explanation of where patterns come from and what practice might change them.
A person is larger than a label. A map leaves room to investigate the differences.
The distinction also protects the comparison. Agreement that degree matters does not mean a diagnostic classification endorses Virtology's mechanisms or methods.
What changed in official classification
ICD-11 describes personality disorder through severity and, when useful, trait qualifiers. This offers a different emphasis from assigning a person to one of several named personality-disorder types. The WHO's clinical descriptions and diagnostic requirements are the authoritative reference.
ICD-11 came into effect as a basis for health reporting in January 2022; national implementation varies. It would be inaccurate to say that every clinician or classification system abandoned categories at that moment. The change discussed here concerns a particular approach to personality disorder, not the disappearance of diagnostic categories throughout mental health care.
The practical questions are about severity, characteristic features and difficulties in functioning. The aim is a clinically useful description, not a label that replaces the person.
The source points to longstanding concerns about overlap between categories and thresholds that can make a one-criterion difference appear more decisive than it feels in real life. Dimensional thinking is one response to those problems, rather than proof that all earlier assessment was worthless.
Why degree and context can be useful
A degree invites a question about variation. When is a response stronger? When is it weaker? What makes it manageable? What would a meaningful improvement look like?
Context also matters. A preference for precision may be useful in one task and become inflexibility in another. The same trait does not have one fixed consequence across every environment.
A pronounced tendency is not, by itself, sufficient for a personality-disorder diagnosis. Assessment considers the nature, persistence and impact of the difficulties, together with other requirements and possible explanations. A strong preference or one difficult interaction cannot answer those questions alone.
The source's larger point is about direction. A description becomes more helpful when it tells us where to look and what change would mean. Knowing a score is only part of that task; understanding the person and choosing appropriate care remain necessary.
What Virtology puts in place of a single box
Casarotto proposes a composition. Temperament supplies inherited tendencies, described in the model as morally neutral. Virtues are learned capacities intended to influence how those tendencies are expressed.
The account describes seven broad competencies emerging through that relationship. These interact with character, psychological life, identity, biological conditions and life phase, taking concrete form in fifty-one subcompetencies. Discipline, for example, becomes visible in arriving on time, maintaining focus or taking care of materials. Social intelligence becomes visible in listening, negotiating or delivering difficult feedback.
These are 51 subcompetencies, not the 51 human needs. The book contains both maps. Needs concern what supports and motivates a life; subcompetencies concern particular forms of functioning a person may practice. Sharing a number does not make them the same classification.
The practical ambition is that a tendency need not determine every outcome. What comes easily or with difficulty can be distinguished from what has been learned, supported or practiced. That ambition does not guarantee unlimited change or make an inherited characteristic a defect to remove.
What is a measurement, and what is a framework?
The source chapter writes aspects of this composition in notation, and explicitly warns readers not to treat it as an equation from physics or statistics.
Here, notation is a compact grammar of relationships. A connecting dot indicates composition, not an instruction to multiply two measured numbers. An equals sign describes emergence within the model; a superscript indicating seven refers to seven competencies rather than raising a value to the seventh power.
The distinction avoids an obvious mistake. If the formula were literal multiplication, setting one factor to zero might imply that the person had no behavior at all. That is not what the author means. In his framework, the absence of a developed capacity changes what directs the response; it does not make the response disappear.
This explanation of composition concerns the notation described in this chapter. It does not automatically settle the empirical status of every other formula elsewhere in the system. Each proposed relationship still needs clear definitions and an appropriate way of being assessed.
Why fifty-one subcompetencies?
The chapter presents the count as the result of a classification, not an arithmetic truth hidden in the universe. Each entry is intended to name something observable and trainable that is not entirely reducible to another entry.
That criterion produces different-sized groups. In the source account, discipline includes thirteen subcompetencies because everyday organization separates into many recognizable acts. Adaptability includes three because it operates across other capacities and is described as having fewer distinct forms of its own.
The count therefore serves the map. It is not a claim that every other useful taxonomy must contain precisely fifty-one items, or that naming an item proves its independence psychometrically.
The everyday advantage is specificity. Someone who calls themselves “disorganized” may discover that the difficulty concerns beginning tasks and estimating time, while many other forms of organization are functioning. The global label had spread farther than the observations justified.
A useful map makes strengths visible as well as difficulties. It asks where a problem is located and where it is not.
When the body enters the account
The model includes a neurobiological factor. The chapter discusses this both as a condition that makes capacities possible and as something that can affect how an existing capacity is expressed.
Its instrument metaphor is helpful: the material allows an instrument to produce sound, while a change in its condition can also alter that sound. There is no contradiction in attending to both its construction and its present state.
In everyday terms, someone may have developed real capacities and still respond differently during pain, sleep loss, illness or another difficult physical condition. That does not automatically mean a mask has fallen away to reveal their “true character.”
Nor can an observer infer a neurotransmitter imbalance from the response. The biological explanations in the model are not readings available from a facial expression or an argument. Where symptoms or marked changes in functioning require assessment, they deserve assessment.
A practical question can come before a verdict on character: what was happening in the body and circumstances at the time? How much rest, nourishment, pain or sustained stress was involved? Those questions widen the account; they do not excuse harm or identify a diagnosis on their own.
Two levels: broad capacity and concrete practice
The distinction between seven central competencies and fifty-one subcompetencies is a distinction of abstraction. Discipline, social intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and adaptability are broad domains. Arriving on time, listening without interruption and giving difficult feedback are particular actions.
You cannot simply write “develop discipline” in a notebook and know what to do tomorrow. A more usable intention might be to prepare the materials for one recurring appointment, finish a defined task before starting another, or put something away when you have used it.
The source emphasizes practicing the concrete expression. A broader capacity is intended to emerge through repeated work on those expressions, rather than through admiration for its name.
This is a method of turning an intention into something observable. It is not a claim that broad capacities are meaningless or that everyone needs identical drills. The chosen action must make sense for the person, the situation and the obstacle.
What could count against the model?
The chapter states several commitments that, in principle, could challenge its account. This matters because a model that can explain any possible outcome afterward has made testing too easy for itself.
The examples in the source include:
If structured virtue practice over time produced no detectable functional change, the claim that the relevant virtue is trainable would be challenged.
If temperament measures varied as much as competency measures, the proposed distinction between a more stable inherited base and acquired capacities would need reconsideration.
If development consistently occurred without the predicted change in pride, the central role assigned to pride would need reconsideration.
If serious behavioral difficulties appeared in people described as highly developed without the biological correlates the model predicts, that part of its explanation would lose support.
These statements are research commitments, not findings that the model has already survived. They require reliable measures, a definition of the intervention, suitable timeframes, comparison conditions and a way to avoid defining “development” by the very result being tested.
Being explicit about those requirements can strengthen the conversation. The question becomes what evidence would change an interpretation, rather than whether the interpretation can always be protected.
What changes at the family table
“He has always been like that” assigns an essence. It can distribute familiar family roles in one sentence: the explosive one, the difficult one, the distant one, the dramatic one.
The label may shape how the person sees themselves and what others expect. Once everyone anticipates the same response, differences can become harder to notice.
A more specific description might be: “When he feels evaluated, the reaction becomes intense; in other settings it is different.” The sentence loses some of its finality and gains a situation, a degree and a question about variation.
Sometimes a description carried into adult life began in one childhood context. The behavior may have been real; the mistake was allowing that context to describe every future setting. Looking for differences can reveal something the family shorthand has stopped recording.
Replacing judgment with investigation
Virtology reads some rigid patterns as defenses that have become automatic. The question changes from “What is wrong with you?” to “What might this response be protecting, and what could make another response possible?”
That is a proposed formulation, not a universal cause of all personality difficulties. It should be used to open investigation rather than decide in advance that a defense explains everything.
The same care applies to dimensional language. Degrees can become another exhausting scoreboard if every trait is continually measured against an ideal. The aim is not to maximize a collection of numbers. It is to understand difficulties that matter in a real life and identify useful support.
A practice for this week
Replace a global label with degree and context
Write three labels you use for yourself: “anxious,” “explosive,” “closed off,” or your own words.
Rewrite each as an observation about a situation. “When I am being evaluated, anxiety feels like eight out of ten; with close friends, it is closer to two.” The numbers are personal shorthand, not clinical scores.
Add one line about history. When did you begin noticing this response? What was happening then?
Ask what seems like a tendency, what seems like a learned response, and what may depend on current conditions. Treat the distinctions as questions, not conclusions about your biology.
Choose a small direction. What would make that particular situation more manageable? What is one observable response you could practice or ask for help with?
The same care with labels matters when reading cultural patterns. God Bless America presents Casarotto's structural Americanism as a cultural argument, not a diagnosis of individual people. Its English translation is available; Foundations of Virtology is in translation, with materials on request.
If a pattern is seriously affecting relationships, work or your ability to care for yourself, seek a qualified assessment. A homemade scale does not diagnose personality disorder. This reflection is intended to improve the questions you bring to a conversation, not to replace professional care.
About this English edition
Translated and edited from the Portuguese essay; original artwork retained.
