Personality Disorders

I've always found the personality disorders to be interesting, but we seem to know the least (or at least disagree the most) about thier etiology and classification. I worked as a research assistant in a Personality lab when I was an undergrad at Penn State--the lab, at the time, was attemping to find empirical support for the vulernable narcissism subtype (as opposed to the grandiose subtype which is currently the only one in the DSM, which I thought was really cool. Anyway, I'd like to comment on an aspect of the Moffitt (1993) article that I found particularly problematic. The author suggests that adolescence-limited delinquency is normative and adaptive, evidenced by its prevalence and flexibility. However, the author seems to be taking sort of a laid back attitude about adolescent delinquency. Just because its the norm doesn't mean its okay and it doesn't mean that its not problematic. Moffitt (1993) even does so far as to say that people who refrain from delinquency in adolescence are the ones that "warrant our scientific scrutiny" (pg. 689). She also outlines reasons for why some people fail to commit antisocial acts, which seems counterintuitive to me. Why should we be concentrating on explaining the processes underlying FAILURE to take part in delinquent behavior? Is there evidence that relates an abscence of delinquency in adolescence with negative outcomes? Moffitt (1993) cites a study by Shedler and Blcok (1990) that attempts to show that abstainers are linked with an "enduring personality configuration", marked by social isolation, poor interpersonal skills, etc. but I don't think the evidence is strong enough to assume that adolescence who do not engage in delinquent acts are worse off. Moffit (1993) makes an argument for why people who show no history of delinquent behavior become delinquent in adolescence namely through social mimicry and being trapped in the maturity gap. One thing I wondered though: Is such a small number of life course persistent teens really able to influence such a large number of people so strongly that people with no prior delinquency will mimic their behavior? The author states that the prevalence rate of persisters is 5% or roughly equivalent to one or two per classroom. This makes me think that there has to be substantially more teens who display prosocial behavior, so why aren't they being mimicked? The author suggests that the desirable resource that these adolescents are attempting to attain by mimicking antisocial youths is mature status. But I think that positive, prosocial behavior could bring about just as much power and prestige as delinquent acts. So why aren't more of them being mimicked? Of course, there are inevitably going to be teens who fall victim to (negative)social mimicry. However, this doesn't seem like to most compelling explanation to explain the substantial increase in delinquency in adolescence...I'd like to say I have an alternative but I don't...just intuitively, I think there are some flaws in Moffitt's reasoning.