General Personality Disorder: A study into the core components of personality pathology

This thesis explores the structure of various models of General Personality Disorder (PD) and severity levels of PD.
In the first part of this thesis, a model of functional impairment, i.e. Livesley's adaptive failure model, as a definition of General PD, and a model of structural impairment, i.e. Kernberg's model of ego- organisation, as a definition of core features of PD, are investigated. The psychometric properties of the General Assessment of Personality Disorders (GAPD), as an instrument for assessing the core features of PD, and the Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO), as a measure of the structural model of Kernberg are described. Also, in a study using item-response theory (IRT), markers of a general level of personality (dys)functioning are identified. These markers and models of general personality dysfunction are compared with the Alternative DSM-5 model for PD.
Part two of this thesis explores the relationships between models of general personality dysfunction and models of personality traits. It shows that models of general PD can be distinguished from the Five-Factor Model of personality, and it describes a study towards the incremental value of models of personality dysfunction and models of personality traits in the prediction of the presence and severity of PDs. Finally it presents a brief communication concerning the question whether the extreme endpoints of the Five-Factor Model domains are intrinsically maladaptive.
The results of the study are discussed in the context of the proposed changes of the definition of PD for the DSM-5, and clinical applications are formulated.