Test Psiopatia

Journal of Abnormal Psychology August 1991 Vol. 100, No. 3, 391-398

© 1991 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only--not for distribution.

Psychopathy and the DSM—IV Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder
Robert D. Hare University of British Columbia Stephen D. Hart University of British Columbia Timothy J. Harpur University of British Columbia ABSTRACT TheAxis II Work Group of the Task Force on DSM—IV has expressed concern that antisocial personality disorder (APD) criteria are too long and cumbersome and that they focus on antisocial behaviors rather than personality traits central to traditional conceptions of psychopathy and to international criteria. We describe an alternative to the approach taken in the rev. 3rd ed. of the Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM—III—R ; American Psychiatric Association, 1987 ), namely, the revised Psychopathy Checklist. We also discuss the multisite APD field trials designed to evaluate and compare four criteria sets: the DSM—III—R criteria, a shortened list of these criteria, the criteria for dyssocial personality disorder from the 10th ed. of the International Classification ofDiseases ( World Health Organization, 1990 ), and a 10-item criteria set for psychopathic personality disorder derived from the revised Psychopathy Checklist. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions of the American Psychiatric Association or its Task Force on DSM—IV. This work was supported by Grant MT-4511 from the Medical ResearchCouncil of Canada and by the Program of Research on Mental Health and the Law of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the substantial contributions of Adelle E. Forth and Sherrie Williamson to the development of the psychopathic personality disorder criteria. We also appreciate the thoughtful comments made by Thomas A. Widiger and Scott Lilienfeld on an earlierdraft of the article. Timothy J. Harpur is now at the University of Illinois at Champaign. Correspondence may be addressed to Robert D. Hare, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Y7.
Received: July 24, 1990 Revised: October 30, 1990 Accepted: December 17, 1990

The Axis II Work Group of the American PsychiatricAssociation's Task Force on DSM—IV (the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ) has identified antisocial personality disorder (APD) as "the personality disorder most likely to undergo major changes in
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DSM—IV" ( American Psychiatric Association, 1990 , p. 5). Thegoals of the work group are to "simplify the criteria for this disorder and at the same time include more traditional items, typical of psychopathy" (p. 6). As part of the second goal, the work group hopes to increase "congruency and compatibility" between the DSM—IV and criteria from the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10; World Health Organization, 1990 ).The following four criteria sets have been developed for evaluation and comparison in field trials: the existing criteria in the revised DSM—III ( DSM—III—R ; American Psychiatric Association, 1987 ) for APD (see Table 1 ); a shortened list of the DSM—III—R criteria, developed by Lee Robins ( Table 2 ); the ICD-10 criteria for dyssocial personality disorder ( Table 3 ); and a set of diagnosticcriteria for psychopathic personality disorder ( Table 4 ) derived from the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL—R; Hare, 1985a , 1991 ). In this article we discuss the concerns that led the Axis II Work Group to consider making changes in the DSM—III—R criteria for APD. Next, we describe alternative approaches to the DSM—III—R criteria, focusing on the PCL—R. Finally, we comment briefly on the DSM—IV...