The DSM classification of personality disorder: clinical wisdom or empirical truth? A response to Alvin R. Mahrer's problem 11.

In a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology Alvin R. Mahrer (1999, pp. 1147-1156) outlined 11 problems facing the field of psychotherapy. Problem 11 states that psychotherapy rests on a foundation of truths that have not been tested in ways that could find them to be false. This point is especially pertinent to the DSM classification of personality disorders. None of the DSM-IV categories of personality disorder were discovered through empirical research. Rather, they were hypothesized by psychiatrists and psychologists, and put into writing. A review of the relevant literature reveals that empirical research findings rarely agree with the DSM conceptions of personality disorder classification. It is concluded that only through continuing empirical research efforts can we discover how nature "intended" personality pathology to be classified.