Abstract The study objective was to evaluate the within category cohesiveness and between-category overlap of DSM-IV axis II personality disorders (PDs) in outpatients with binge eating disorder (BED). Seventy adult outpatients with BED were reliably administered the Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (DIPD-IV). Within-category interrelatedness of the criteria was evaluated by Cronbach's α and mean intercriterion correlations (MICs). Between-category criterion overlap was evaluated by examining intercategory mean intercriterion correlations between all pairs of PDs (ICMICs). Cronbach's α was .64 to .93 (mean, .77), the MIC was.17 to.52 (mean,.34), and the ICMIC was .11 to .39 (mean, .28). Our findings indicate that in outpatients with BED, the DSM-IV PD criteria sets have convergent validity (acceptable a value and MIC). Some degree of discriminant validity also exists: criteria for most DSM-IV PDs correlate better with each other (MIC) than with criteria for other PDs (ICMIC).