Personality Disorder or Personality Style: That Is the Question.

MILLON Clinical Multiaxial Inventory; PERSONALITY tests; MILLON, Theodore; PERSONALITY disorders; PERSONALITY; PSYCHOTHERAPY patients

The article responds to the feature written by Theodore Millon regarding his Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI). The main controversy surrounding the MCMI has focused on the claim that the test measures diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM)-III disorders. The data available tend to show that the concordance between the MCMI-I and the DSM-III may be poor, perhaps for both the Axis I clinical syndromes and the Axis II personality disorders. Although some of the problems may have been improved with the MCMI-II, concerns over differences between the MCMI conceptualization of the different disorders and the DSM-III-R remain. Because the items that compose the MCMI scales often do not show much concordance with the DSM-III-R criteria for the same syndrome, it may well to deemphasize the ability of the MCMI to measure the DSM-III-R disorders. The original eight basic personality scales of the MCMI-I is seen as measuring personality styles rather than personality disorders. The items that constitute those scales deal mostly with the way the participants feel about himself or herself and how she or he relates to the others, rather than the issue of how functional these feelings or relationships maybe. As a result, these scales tend to be elevated when the inventory is used with normals. It has been pointed out, in defense of the MCMI, that it was standardized with psychiatric patients and should not be used with normals. To be consistent with this posture, one would have to believe that the inventory should not be used as a screening instrument in which normals could be tested, a position that none of those using the inventory is willing to take.