TEMPERAMENT AND THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY-DISORDER SYMPTOMS

This paper attempts to construct a simplified system for the classific ation of personality disorders, and relates this system to normally di stributed human personality characteristics. One hundred and forty-eig ht subjects with a variety of psychiatric diagnoses were evaluated usi ng the SCID-II structured clinical interview for personality disorders . A four-factor solution of personality disorder symptoms was obtained and we labelled these factors 'the four As': antisocial, asocial, ast henic and anankastic. The factors related to the four temperament dime nsions of the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ), but less closely to Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) dimensions. The fo ur factors were similar to those identified in a number of studies usi ng a variety of assessment methods and this lends some credibility to our findings. It suggests that a more parsimonious set of trait descri ptors could be used to provide simpler, less overlapping categories th at retain links with current clinical practice. In addition, these fac tors can be seen as extremes of normally distributed behaviours obtain ed using the TPQ questionnaire.