A Prototype Analysis of the Diagnostic Criteria for DSM-III-R Personality Disorders

A prototype analysis of the diagnostic criteria for the DSM-III-R personality disorders was performed using a card-sorting task. Twenty psychiatrists and clinical psychologists sorted the 142 diagnostic criteria from the DSM-III-R definitions into piles, with each pile containing the criteria associated with a particular personality disorder. Thirty percent of the personality disorder criteria failed to be sorted into their parent categories by a majority of the clinicians. In addition, there were 12 DSM-III-R criteria that were consistently sorted into categories other than the ones they were intended to define. On the other hand, slightly more than one-third of the criteria were assigned to the correct parent category by 80% or more of the clinicians. The discussion focuses on the overlap of the diagnostic criteria across personality disorders.