The development and use of standardized assessment of abnormal personality.

A standardized assessment of personality (SAP) based on interview with an informant has been developed to classify a patient's premorbid personality in clinical terms for use for research purposes in or out of a hospital setting. Three preliminary investigations of its use are reported. These indicate that an informant's account of personality can be rated reliably by psychiatrists and is consistent over time. The addition of two extra descriptive types to the schema of ICD Section 301, the anxious and the self-conscious personalities, is found to contribute usefully to a taxonomy of personality in two series of patients investigated with the SAP. Further investigations are indicated to determine the accuracy of an informant's account before epidemiological studies with this instrument can be considered.