Rolling in the Deep of Personality: Psychometric Properties of the Structured Interview of Personality Organization – Revised (STIPO-R) in Italy

The STIPO-R (Structured Interview of Personality Organization – Revised) is an interview assessing personality organization across five major functional domains (identity, object relations, defenses, aggression, moral values). In contrast to a-theoretical models, the STIPO-R offers a theoretically grounded conceptualization of personality pathology based on object-relations theory. This study tests psychometric properties of the interview across mixed psychiatric patients (N = 180) and community individuals (N = 170) in Italy. Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated that a bifactor model with five specific factors and a general factor had good fit. The latent scores discriminated between patients and controls, while some specific dimensions differentiated those with PDs from other psychiatric patients. The STIPO-R had sensible correlations with criterion measures, including maladaptive personality traits and symptom distress. Finally, a network analysis on the mean scores of the STIPO-R suggested no major difference in the network structure between patients and controls, indicating that the dimensions of defenses, aggression, and identity were the most interconnected in the networks. The STIPO-R appears to be a valid tool to assess personality impairment, and a good operationalization of the psychodynamic theory of personality pathology upon which it is built.