Eysenk's dimensions into “the zone” of personality deviations

Background

Into this study we try to find parallels between Eysenk's “neurotism - psychotism, extraversion – introversion” and personality traits that described personality disorders by ICD-10 system (measured with IPDE).

Materials and methods

457 persons at the age of 18 up to 40 take part into the study, distributed in three groups:

I group – 185 inpatients with personality disorders traits without any other psychiatric morbidity;

II group – 138 soldiers – comparative group;

III group – 83 students – comparative group;

All of participants respond to the following exclusion criteria:

• Organic brain pathology

• Intellectual retardation

• Psychotic disorders

• Dependencies

Clinical group was explored by Screening IPDE, IPDE and Eysenk's questionnaire.

Control groups was examined by Screening IPDE and Eysenk's questionnaire. When the Screening IPDE results into control groups was “positive” for personality deviations - these persons was excluded from the study.

Results

We investigate dimensional and cathegorial differences between EPQ results for the three groups. We used coefficient for statistical significance for differences of results and Student-Neuman-Keuls analysis. Our results demonstrate that EPQ exploration of personality traits suspect for personality disorders have high level of formal agreement, related to “neurotism” scale that is relevant to the anxiety and distress. This result is valid for dimensional and categorial results of test into the three investigated groups.

The high relative gravity of personality disorders integrated by emotional instability explain high scores on “extraversion” scale into the inpatient's group. They sustain statistical differences between clinical and healthy groups.

Conclusions

Expected negative correlations between personality disorders and anxiety was confirmed only for scale “neurotism”. Some results contradict to a commonly accepted opinion that describes personality disorders like making suffer to others. Subjectively experienced feeling of anxiety and distress are confirm by other studies.