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The Structured Interview for Personality Organization (STIPO) is an outgrowth of Kernberg's conceptual model (1984) positing three levels of personality organization: neurotic, borderline, and psychotic. These levels of personality organization derive from an assessment that places particular emphasis on the ego functions of reality testing, sense of identity, and defensive style. The STIPO assesses these dimensions, as well as quality of object relations, coping/rigidity, aggression, and moral functioning, dimensions also thought to be determinative of personality organization.
The STIPO differs from measures typically found in the personality assessment literature by its sampling of psychoanalytically oriented constructs (e.g., defenses, quality of object relations) and its assess- ment of functioning across the spectrum of normal and disordered personality. The STIPO differs from other psychoanalytically informed measures of personality in its clear grounding in a specific theory of personality organization, and its highly structured and standardized format of administration.
The objectives of this preliminary reliability/validity study were to demonstrate the internal consistency of the STIPO subscales, and to test the convergent validity of the STIPO—i.e., correlations between STIPO domains and variables relevant to character pathology and health (e.g., measures of aggression, negative temperament, and indices of Axis II symptoms).
Data for this study were pooled from two ongoing investigations involving the STIPO. The first is a reliability/validity study drawing