Interpersonal profiles and neurotic symptoms: Are they associated with each other?

Abstract

The idea that neurotic symptoms are determined by interpersonal characteristics is of central importance for psychoanalytic theory, diagnostics, and treatment. In the present paper, the hypotheses were tested that (1) in general, neurotic symptoms are associated with interpersonal problems and (2) more specific, that a hysterical and an obsessional interpersonal dimension underlie the field of neurotic symptoms and that both dimensions are associated with specific types of neurotic symptoms. In a first study, the hysterical and obsessional interpersonal profiles were mapped by correlating clinicians' ratings on hysteria and obsessional neurosis with the scales of the IIP-64 interpersonal circumplex in a sample of neurotic outpatients. Hysteria was associated with nonassertive, overly accommodating, and self-sacrificing interpersonal behavior and obsessional neurosis was associated with vindictive and cold interpersonal behavior. In a second study, associations of these interpersonal profiles with different SCL-90-R neurotic symptom clusters were investigated in a second sample of neurotic patients and in student sample. The results showed that both interpersonal profiles were significantly associated with a wide range of neurotic symptoms. However, the hypothesized differential associations of the hysterical and obsessional interpersonal profile with distinguished types of neurotic symptoms were not observed.