ON MODELING PERSONALITY-DISORDERS - ARE PERSONALITY STYLE AND DISORDERED FUNCTIONING INDEPENDENT OR INTERDEPENDENT CONSTRUCTS

Current descriptors of personality disorder (PD) are an amalgam of two constructs, personality style and/or disorder. We seek to determine w hether their intrinsic personality style descriptors are proxy measure s of, or independent of, disordered personality functioning. In a samp le of depressed patients, psychiatrists rated 16 differing PD personal ity style vignettes and assessed eight differing manifestations of dis ordered functioning. When ''personality'' vignettes and identified per sonality clusters were intercorrelated with ''disorder'' variables, in terdependence was generally evident, suggesting that the personality d escriptors underpinning current definition of the PDs actually act as proxy criteria for assessing disorder because they are, in and of them selves, descriptors of pathological functioning. The obsessional perso nality vignette provided an exception, seeming to be independent of di sordered function. Such results assist consideration of how best to mo del, define and measure the personality disorders.