ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. Work on the questionnaire was unique in including the most comprehensive set of scales hitherto subjected to statistical analysis, in order to try and establish, definitively, the factorial structure of psychotic traits. The items and scales that were included covered not just regular schizotypy measures but others to do with hypomania and borderline personality. Chronologically in parallel with this medical movement, there was another research tradition that also sought to dimensionalise psychopathology, but more radically. The starting point was not mental illness, but individual differences in personality. According to that view, psychological disorders could be seen as extreme expressions of personality and temperamental dimensions underlying health. Traits and symptoms certainly have different properties: the former are more continuous, follow normal distributions and are ego-syntonic, the latter are ego-dystonic and more often dichotomous and skewed in their distribution.
