Da. Clark et al., PERSONALITY VULNERABILITY, PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSES, AND SYMPTOMS - CLUSTER ANALYSES OF THE SOCIOTROPY-AUTONOMY SUBSCALES, Cognitive therapy and research, 21(3), 1997, pp. 267-283
To determine whether psychiatric outpatients represented distinct pers
onality types with respect to sociotropy and autonomy, the Sociotropy
and Autonomy scale (SAS; Beck, Epstein, Harrison, & Emery, 1983) was a
dministered to 2,067 psychiatric outpatients with predominantly DSM-II
I-R mood or anxiety disorders. Both agglomerative-hierarchical and non
hierarchical cluster analyses performed on the six subscales of the SA
S revealed four personality types-Independence, Dependence, Individual
istic Achievement and Low Scoring Controls. Loglinear analyses failed
to reveal significant differences between clusters in specific Axis I
diagnoses, though a significantly higher proportion of the sociotropic
Dependent type had a Dependent or Avoidant personality disorder The a
utonomous Independent and sociotropic Dependent clusters also had high
er levels of self-reported and clinically rated depression and anxiety
than did the Individualistic Achievement and Low scoring groups. The
implications of these results for understanding the relationship betwe
en personality and psychopathology are discussed.