Am J Psychiatry 1986; 143:718-722
Copyright © 1986 by American Psychiatric Association
The relationship of histrionic personality disorder to antisocial personality and somatization disorders
SO Lilienfeld, C Van Valkenburg, K Larntz and HS Akiskal
The authors examined the association of antisocial personality disorder,
somatization disorder, and histrionic personality disorder, both within
individuals and within families, in 250 patients. All three disorders
overlapped considerably within individuals; the strongest relationship was
between antisocial personality and histrionic personality. A high
prevalence of antisocial personality was reported in the families of
patients with somatization disorder but not in the families of patients
with histrionic personality. The authors suggest that histrionic
individuals develop antisocial personality if they are male and
somatization disorder if female; moreover, all three conditions may
represent alternative manifestations or different stages of the same
underlying diathesis.
