Investigating a Common Structure of Personality Pathology and Attachment

Abstract

Critical theoretical intersections between adult insecure attachment and personality disorders (PDs) suggest that they may overlap, but a lack of empirical analysis to date has limited further interpretation. The current study used a large sample (N = 812) of undergraduates (N = 355) and adults receiving psychological treatment (N = 457) to test whether a joint hierarchical factor structure of personality pathology and insecure attachment is tenable. Results suggested that attachment and PD indicators load together on latent domains of emotional lability, detachment, and vulnerability, but antagonistic, impulsigenic, and psychosis-spectrum factors do not subsume attachment indicators. This solution was relatively consistent across treatment status but varied across gender, potentially suggesting divergent socialization of interpersonal problems. Although further tests are needed, if attachment and PDs prove to be unitary, combining them has exciting potential for providing an etiologic-developmental substrate to the classification of interpersonal dysfunction.