Relationship between attachment patterns and personality pathology in adolescents.

Objective: To explore the relationship between attachment status and personality pathology in a large clinical sample of adolescents.

Method: Two hundred ninety-four randomly selected psychiatrists and psychologists were each asked to provide data on a patient (aged 14-18 years) in treatment for maladaptive personality patterns. Clinicians completed several measures including a clinician-report attachment questionnaire, several measures of personality pathology, and a clinician-report version of the Child Behavior Checklist.

Results: In both dimensional and categorical analyses, secure attachment was negatively correlated with personality pathology and positively correlated with healthy functioning, whereas disorganized/unresolved attachment was strongly associated with multiple forms of personality pathology. Anxious/ambivalent attachment tended to be associated with measures of withdrawal, internalization, and introversion. Avoidant attachment style was not associated with any single form of personality pathology.

Conclusion: The marked association between unresolved attachment and more severe psychopathology in adolescents, the lack of construct validity of avoidant personality disorder in adolescents, and the broader relations among attachment, personality, and psychopathology are discussed.