ABSTRACT
An empirical study with the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire, which in substance follows exactly the criteria of personality disorders described in the DSM-III, is used to highlight a number of problems connected with the DSM-III. Criticisms of the DSM-III previously expressed by other authors, e.g. concerning multiple choice between characteristics and equal weighting of different symptoms, are supported by this empirical study.
Subject(s)
Personality Disorders/diagnosis , Psychiatric Status Rating Scales , Cluster Analysis , Diagnosis, Differential , Humans , Personality Disorders/psychology , PsychometricsABSTRACT
30 mothers of epileptic children and a control group of 30 mothers of healthy children were tested with the 'Semantic Differential' regarding their attitudes towards the concepts 'Mentally III', 'Epileptic', 'Diabetic' and 'My child' in relationship to the concept 'A person I like' as a clearly positively charged affective variable. The social distance to the disease carriers was, in opposition to equal-ranking tendencies of the various concepts of disease in both groups, smaller for the experimental group than for the control group. Regarding the atitude of the mothers to their own children, mothers of the experimental group demonstrated the following defense mechanisms: rationalization, denial and reaction formation. Specific attitudes in the areas of child rearing and anomalies in family relation were also revealed with help of the PARI scales. The approval of an active and positive child-rearing method was found to be in opposition to hostile tendencies with regard to their children.
