ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to determine the extent to which elevated scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) among a nontreatment group of adolescents are valid risk indicators of eventual psychopathology and inadequate functioning. It evaluates the differential ability of various methods of analyzing elevated MMPI profiles to predict later difficulties; and discusses any differential patterns in these relationships over time associated with sex and race. Any longitudinal study of psychopathology that takes adolescence as its starting point faces certain theoretical pitfalls, primarily resulting from the high base rate of subjective distress and inadequately developed impulse control frequently found in the developmental period. The MMPI produces normative scores on numerous empirically developed scales of personality. The system of so classifying elevated MMPI profiles developed by D. Lachar was used with a slight modification by Grant Dahlstrom to assign classifications to some subjects whose particular configurations could not be classified using Lachar’s system.
