Despite the phenomenological (e.g., manipulativeness) and dynamic (i.e., emotion dysregulation) analogies between Machiavellianism and Borderline Personality Organization (BPO), the relationship between these constructs has not yet been investigated. In our study, 225 non-clinical, non-student adults (130 females; 32.33 ± 5.42 years of age on average) completed measures of BPO and Machiavellian...

Relatively little is known about the relationship of most personality disorders to executive cognitive functioning despite their associations with frontal cortex activity. Research on genetic influence is lacking for most personality disorders, and research on genetic influences associated with executive cognitive functioning is sparse and mixed. The Florida State Twin Registry was created to c...

BACKGROUND Most of our knowledge about borderline personality disorder features has been obtained through the study of clinical samples. Although these studies are important in their own right, they are limited in their ability to address certain important epidemiological and aetiological questions such as the degree to which there is a genetic influence on the manifestation of borderline perso...

BACKGROUND Co-occurrence of bulimia nervosa and borderline personality disorder has been attributed to shared factors, including childhood abuse and disturbances in central serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) mechanisms. To explore this notion, we conducted a controlled assessment of childhood abuse and 5-HT function in bulimics with and without borderline personality disorder. METHOD Forty...

OBJECTIVE Suicidal behavior is highly prevalent in borderline personality disorder and major depressive episode, although the characteristics of suicide attempts in the two disorders are believed to differ. Comorbidity of borderline personality disorder and major depressive episode may obscure characteristics of suicide attempts that are uniquely related to the psychopathology of each disorder....

OBJECTIVE The authors examined the relationship of borderline personality disorder to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with respect to the role of trauma and its timing. METHOD The Trauma History Questionnaire and the PTSD module of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R were administered to 180 male and female outpatients with a diagnosis of one or more DSM-III-R personality dis...

BACKGROUND Outcome in bipolar patients can be affected by comorbidity of other psychiatric disorders. Comorbid personality disorders are frequent and may complicate the course of bipolar illness. We have much information about treating patients with uncomplicated bipolar disorder (BD) but much less knowledge about possibilities for patients with the comorbidity of BD and personality disorder. ...

Although personality disorders are best understood in the context of lifetime development, there is a paucity of work examining their longitudinal trajectory. An understanding of the expected course and the genetic and environmental contributions to these disorders is necessary for a detailed understanding of risk processes that lead to their manifestation. The current study examined the longit...

The work by Kendler et al. (1) in this issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica replicates the phenotypic correlation between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and the trait of neuroticism from the fivefactor model of personality (FFM; 2) within a large twin sample. This study also extends previous work by using behavioural genetics to examine the underpinnings of the relationship between BP...

OBJECTIVE The syndromal and subsyndromal phenomenology of borderline personality disorder was tracked over 6 years of prospective follow-up. METHOD The psychopathology of 362 inpatients with personality disorders was assessed with the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R) and borderline personality disorder module of the Revised Diagnostic Interview for DSM-III-R Personality Di...