Objective-Research on deliberate self-harm (intentionally injuring oneself without suicidal intent) has focused on clinical and forensic populations. Studying only these populations, which typically have serious psychopathology, may lead to inflated estimates of the association between self-harm and psychiatric disorder, as well as of the prevalence of deliberate self-harm. The present study investigated the prevalence and correlates of deliberate self-harm in a large group of nonclinical subjects.Method-Participants were 1,986 military recruits, 62% of whom were men, who were participating in a study of peer assessment of personality traits and pathology. Individuals who did and did not report a history of self-harm were compared on measures of personality and psychopathology.Results-Approximately 4% of the participants reported a history of deliberate self-harm. Compared with participants without a history of deliberate self-harm, self-harmers scored higher on self-and peer-report measures of borderline, schizotypal, dependent, and avoidant personality disorder symptoms and reported more symptoms of anxiety and depression. Item-level analyses indicated that peers viewed self-harmers as having strange and intense emotions and a heightened sensitivity to interpersonal rejection.Conclusions-About one of every 25 members of a large group of relatively high-functioning nonclinical subjects reported a history of self-harm. Self-harmers had more symptoms of several personality disorders than non-self-harmers, and their performance across measures suggested that anxiety plays a prominent role in their psychopathology. Future research should investigate whether psychotherapies or psychiatric medications known to reduce symptoms of anxiety can be effective in treating deliberate self-harm.Deliberate self-harm is defined as the intentional injuring of one's own body without apparent suicidal intent (1). Other names for this behavior include superficial-moderate selfmutilation (2), self-injurious behavior (3, 4), parasuicide (5), and self-wounding (6). Deliberate self-harm is encountered frequently in psychiatric hospitals (7) and also in outpatient settings (8). Deliberate self-harm may be found in patients with a variety of diagnoses, including substance abuse, eating disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, major Address reprint requests to Dr. Turkheimer, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, 102 Gilmer Hall, P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400; ent3c@virginia.edu. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript Author Manuscript depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia (9, 10), as well as each of the personality disorders (11) and especially borderline personality disorder (4, 10, 12, 13).Deliberate self-harm occurs in nonclinical populations as well. Approximately 4% of the general population (14) and 14% of college students (15) have reported a history of deliberate self-harm. A recent study found that as many as 35% of college students report having ...

The emotional responses of schizophrenic, depressed, and normal subjects and whether differences in the emotional responding of these groups depended on how emotional responses were elicited or measured were examined. Twenty-three blunted and 20 nonblunted schizophrenics, 17 unipolar depressed subjects, and 20 normal subjects were exposed to a series of affect-eliciting stimuli. The stimuli varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and in level of cognitive demand. Subjects reported their subjective experiences, and their facial expressions were videotaped. Blunted schizophrenics were the least facially expressive, although their reported subjective experiences did not differ from those of the other groups. The nonblunted schizophrenics were more responsive than the depressed subjects to the positive stimuli, although the two groups did not differ in their clinical ratings of affective flatness. Historically, psychopathologists have placed a great deal of emphasis on the role of emotional disturbance in schizophrenia. Whereas both Bleuler (1911/1950) and Kraepelin (1919/1971) considered affective flatness to be a universal symptom of schizophrenia, the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (World Health Organization, 1973) revealed that only 66% of the schizophrenic patients studied exhibited flat affect. People with major depression have also been found to have flat affect (e.g., Andreasen, 1979; Pogue-Geile & Harrow, 1984). Although blunted affect may not be a universal symptom of schizophrenia and is not specific to the disorder, it does appear to have prognostic importance (Carpenter,

Psychology is in the early stages of examining a crisis of replicability stemming from several high-profile failures to replicate studies in experimental psychology. This important conversation has largely been focused on social psychology, with some active participation from cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, several other major domains of psychological science-including clinical science-have remained insulated from this discussion. The goals of this article are to (a) examine why clinical psychology and allied fields, such as counseling and school psychology, have not been central participants in the replicability conversation; (b) review concerns and recommendations that are less (or more) applicable to or appropriate for research in clinical psychology and allied fields; and

Most instruments that assess personality disorder rely principally on self‐report. However, there are major limitations to using self‐report for the diagnosis of personality pathology. First, the self provides only one opinion. Second, like everyone else, people with personality disorders are frequently unable to view themselves realistically and are unaware of the effect of their behavior on other people. Using informant data, therefore, may improve the reliability and validity of diagnostic assessment. A review of the literature reveals that agreement between informant‐ and self‐reports of personality disorder is modest at best, even though informants tend to agree with each other. Self‐informant concordance appears to be higher for older subjects and for Cluster B traits (excluding narcissism). Further research should focus on methods of resolving discrepancies between self‐ and informant‐reports of personality disorder and determining when self or informant data are more valid.

Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Using both clinical and subclinical measures of narcissism, we examined others' perceptions, selfperceptions and meta-perceptions of narcissists across a wide range of traits for a new acquaintance and close other (Study 1), longitudinally with a group of new acquaintances (Study 2), and among coworkers (Study 3). Results bring us to three surprising conclusions about narcissists: 1) they understand that others see them less positively than they see themselves (i.e., their meta-perceptions are less biased than are their self-perceptions), 2) they have some insight into the fact that they make positive first impressions that deteriorate over time, and 3) they have insight into their narcissistic personality (e.g., they describe themselves as arrogant). These findings shed light on some of the psychological mechanisms underlying narcissism. Keywordsnarcissism; meta-perception; interpersonal perception; personality "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change" Frank Lloyd Wright (quoted in the Michigan Daily, 1998) Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Lack of self-insight is believed to be a hallmark of narcissism, which suggests that narcissists should not have insight into the negative aspects of their personality or their reputation (e.g., arrogant, disagreeable, entitled). Indeed, narcissists see themselves very positively (e.g., Clifton, Turkheimer, & Oltmanns, 2004) and are motivated to maintain their overly positive self-perceptions (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) which has led researchers to conclude that narcissists "…have less insight into their own condition" (Emmons, 1984, p. 297) and "…probably misunderstand how they are perceived" (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001, p. 183). The main goal of this paper is to test these conclusions by empirically examining whether narcissists have insight into their personality, especially their narcissistic characteristics, and their reputation. Throughout the paper we take a dimensional approach to narcissism and use the term 'narcissist' to refer to people who score high on measures of clinical or subclinical narcissism (Miller & Campbell, 2010 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptTo assess the extent to which narcissists have insight into their personality and reputation, we conduct a multiple-perspective examination of how narcissists are seen by others (i.e., others' perceptions), how they see themselves (i.e., self-perceptions), and how they believe they are seen by others (i.e., meta-perceptions). We also examine these multiple perspectives across several social contexts including new acquaintances, acquaintances not selected by the target (e.g., coworkers), and close others (e.g., friends and family). Thus, we provide a novel, comprehensive look at the interpersonal dynamics of narcissis...

While identity disturbance has long been considered one of the defining features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), the present study marks only the third empirical investigation to assess it and the first to do so from the perspective of research on narrative identity. Drawing on the rich tradition of studying narrative identity, the present study examined identity disturbance in a group of 40 mid-life adults, 20 with features of BPD and a matched sample of 20 without BPD. Extensive life story interviews were analyzed for a variety of narrative elements and the themes of agency, communion fulfillment (but not communion), and narrative coherence significantly distinguished the stories of those people with features of BPD from those without the disorder. In addition, associations between the theme of agency and psychopathology were evident six and twelve months following the life story interview. This study seeks to bridge the mutually-informative fields of research on personality disorders and normal identity processes.

Previous results comparing schizophrenics' and normals' performance in neutral and distractor conditions may be an artifact of discriminating power. Therefore, four digit-span tests were constructed. Two contained irrelevant distractor numbers between presentations of relevant numbers. Each distractor test was matched with a neutral test for coefficient alpha, mean, and variance of test difficulty using 100 normal subjects. This matching was cross-validated on SO additional normal subjects. The first pair of tests contained shorter digit-strings than the second pair. Nineteen chronic schizophrenics showed a differential performance deficit on the longer distractor test but not on the shorter test. This finding suggests that distraction debilitates schizophrenics' performance by interfering with subjective organization in short-term memory.Studies purporting to demonstrate an attentional dysfunction in schizophrenia have usually compared the performance of patient and control subjects in both a neutral and a distractor condition (e.g., Lawson, McGhie, & Chapman, 1967;Rappaport, 1967). Schizophrenics typically perform less adequately than the controls in both conditions. This result alone is not particularly surprising given the general inefficiency of schizophrenics. More important is the finding that the decrement in schizophrenic performance is significantly greater in the distractor condition. This differential deficit has been taken to mean that the specific ability mediating performance on the distractor task (i.e., attention) is a particularly important area of loss, and one that may be central to our understanding of the disorder.

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