PERSONALITY VULNERABILITY, PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSES, AND SYMPTOMS - CLUSTER ANALYSES OF THE SOCIOTROPY-AUTONOMY SUBSCALES

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.