Modeling and measuring the personality disorders

Livesley, Jang, and Vernon (1998. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55, 941-948) reported that personality disorders (PDs) are quantitatively extreme expressions of normal personality functioning, A similarly designed study attempts to replicate those findings for both self- and observer-rated reports of patients judged clinically to have a PD. Analyses of data sets generated by 758 self-reports (SRs) and 515 reports from corroborative witnesses (CWs) refined the set of 266 descriptors to 142 items assessing 30 constructs. Intercorrelation of the constructs revealed considerable interdependence. Principal components analyses identified four factors, consistent across the SR and CW databases, and consistent with the Livesley ct al. (1998) analyses where they were labeled Emotional Dysregulation, Dissocial, Inhibition, and Compulsivity, Replication and extension of findings to CW-rated data offer additional support for the argument that higher-order PD traits strongly resemble normal personality dimensions.