Replicated MMPI subtypes for alcoholic men and women: Relationship to self-reported drinking behaviors.

Recent cluster-analytic research with alcohol-abusing men has demonstrated the existence of several Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) subtypes that are consistent across diverse subject samples. Few such studies have been reported with alcoholic women. Shortcomings of this research include frequent failure to replicate clusters across separate samples and lack of external, independent measures against which to evaluate the predictive validity of cluster typologies. The current study derived replicated MMPI clusters for both inpatient alcoholic men and women. Subsequent multivariate analyses employing several alcohol-use scales revealed significant differences among subtypes of alcoholic women but relatively poor differentiation among subtypes of men by these measures. Impli-cations for future research regarding alcoholic personality subtypes and associated drinking patterns are discussed. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) has been used extensively in the study of personality dynamics of al-cohol abusers. Apfeldorf (1974) outlined two primary paradigms of this research. The first of these assumes that alcoholism is a distinct diagnostic entity with substantive personality structures that distinguish it from other psy-chiatric groups. The development of several MMPI alcoholism scales typifies this approach