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Objective:  Current limitations to diagnosing and measuring the personality disorders encouraged a set of studies seeking to provide an alternate approach to modeling and measuring disordered personality function.

Method:  A large set of self‐reported descriptors of disordered personality function were factor analyzed in a sample of patients with clinician‐diagnosed personality dysfunction, generating 11 lower‐order and two higher‐order constructs. Subjects and non‐clinical controls also completed a measure of personality styles underpinning formalized personality disorder groupings. Properties of the refined self‐report (SR) measure were assessed in an independent sample of patients with a clinically diagnosed personality disorder.

Results:  Limitations in ‘cooperativeness’ and ‘coping’ formed the higher‐order constructs defining disordered personality function, with these constructs relevant to all …