ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the effectiveness of the MCMI and the MCMI-II in identifying patients afflicted with schizophrenia. The task is complicated because behaviors and experiences associated with schizophrenia are also present in schizophreniform disorder and brief reactive psychosis. Disordered thinking characterizes all three disorders, and the criterion for discriminating among them is duration of illness, a bit of history that is not often reflected in “paper and pencil” tests of personality or psychopathology. To complicate matters further, some nonpsychotic disorders, in their acute phase, inflict on patients experiences similar to those that might be experienced by patients with thought disorders. A prominent example is an acute exacerbation of post traumatic stress disorder, during which the afflicted person may experience constricted affect, social detachment, cognitive-perceptual distortions, and hypervigilance (American Psychiatric Association, 1987)—symptoms that might be shared by acutely disturbed schizophrenics.
