References & Sources

Personality Conflicts Full Text

A clinical upstart elbows its way into the personality-assessment fray

A new method based on the insights of mental health clinicians challenges popular approaches to understanding personality.

References:

Johnson, J.G., et al. 1999. Childhood maltreatment increases risk for personality disorders during early adulthood. Archives of General Psychiatry 56(July):600.

Westen, D., and J. Shedler. 1999. Revising and assessing axis II, part II: Toward an empirically based and clinically useful classification of personality disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry 156(February):273.

Further Readings:

Block, J. 1995. A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description. Psychological Bulletin 117(March):187.

Bower, B. 1994. Piecing together personality. Science News 145(March 5):152.

Spitzer, R.L. 1998. Diagnosis and need for treatment are not the same. Archives of General Psychiatry 55(February):120.

Westen, D. 1996. A model and a method for uncovering the nomothetic from the idiographic: An alternative to the five-factor model? Journal of Research in Personality 30:400.

Sources:

Jack Block
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Psychology
Berkeley, CA 94720-1650

Jonathan Shedler
225 North Mill Street
Suite 207
Aspen, CO 81611

Robert L. Spitzer
New York State Psychiatric Institute
Biometrics Research Department
722 West 168th Street
New York, NY 10032

Drew Westen
Cambridge Hospital
Department of Psychiatry
1493 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

Thomas A. Widiger
University of Kentucky
Psychology Department
115 Kastle Hall
Lexington, KY 40506-0044

From Science News, Vol. 156, No. 6, August 7, 1999, p. 88. Copyright © 1999, Science Service.