Discriminative features of Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

This study investigated some discriminative features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) with both clinical and normal samples using a self-report questionnaire. This questionnaire was administered to 116 clinical outpatients (diagnoses: thirty two BPD; twenty four schizophrenia; twenty six depression; twenty nine neurosis; and five other mental disorders) and to 216 college students as a normal sample. Factor analysis produced six factors: emptiness; hallucination and egorrhea; distortional body image and acts of self-inflicted injury; impulsive acting-out; loss of emotional control; and grandiose omnipotence. Distortional body image and acts of selfinflicted injury discriminated BPD the most from the other samples. No significant differences were seen between the BPD and Schizophrenia samples in terms of the hallucination or egorrhea subscales. An intense loss of emotional control, particularly control of negative emotions such as rage, was apparent in the clinical samples, which was not evident in the normal sample.