Searching for demoralization in three measures of personality disorder: linking the MMPI-2 RCd and JBW 72 with MCMI-III, Morey and Ben-Porath personality disorder scales

This study sought to determine if the construct of demoralization can be identified in three established measures of personality disorder, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III, 2006), and personality disorder scales constructed by Morey, Waugh, and Blashfield (1985) and Somwaru and Porath (1995). It was well known that the original nine Clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI, 1943) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Second Edition (MMPI-2, 1989) were saturated with a general dimension of emotional distress, called the “First Factor” (Graham, 2012). The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Second Edition- Restructured Clinical Scales (MMPI-2-RC) represented a dramatic reorganization of the original basic Clinical scales with extensive efforts made to extract this first factor (called demoralization), and to construct a new scale (RCd, named Demoralization) to unambiguously assess this dimension. Yet, some have cited Johnson, Butcher and Waller’s marker (JBW 72, 2006) as being a better measure of demoralization, given its wider breath and focus in symptomatology. Persons suffering from personality disorders often describe their experience as mirroring demoralization, and it is this relationship that this project attempted to examine. The purpose of this study was two-fold. The first step was to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the psychometrics of JBW 72; the latter analyses searched for the presence of demoralization within various measures of personality disorder. Results from the research not only supported the existence of demoralization within various measures of personality, but also broadened our understanding of its multidimensionality, provided supporting evidence that RCd and JBW 72 are likely measuring different facets of demoralization, and point towards a number of clinical implications.

Author

• Herren, Rayna K.

Identifier

hdl:10057/14542

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:soar.wichita.edu:10057/14542