Eric Van Denburg

Interpretative guide to the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory

This work is designed to help mental health graduate students and professionals understand and interpret the MCMI-III. It discusses the design, development and operating characteristics of the inventory, along with the basics of personality theory.

Racial bias and the MCMI.

We studied the scores obtained on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) by Black and White male psychiatric inpatients to determine the presence or absence of racial bias. In predicting psychopathology for the two races, comparisons of MCMI performance indicated significant differences for all diagnoses except the personality disorders. The subjects were then matched into two groups of 209 patients each, according to DSM-III psychiatric diagnoses. The data were analyzed at the item, scale, and structural levels. At the item level, application of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure revealed that 45 of the 175 items of the inventory were answered significantly different by the two racial groups. Because this number was higher than what could be expected by chance, the finding suggested possible deficiencies in terms of the culture-fairness of the items used in the test. At the scale level, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that the scores obtained by the Black and White groups were significantly different in 9 of the 20 scales (Histrionic, Narcissistic, Antisocial, Paraphrenia, Hypomania, Dysthymia, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, and Psychotic Delusion). With the exception of the Dysthymic scale, all of the differences were in the direction of the Blacks obtaining a higher score than the Whites. At the structural level, however, a principal components factor analysis performed on each group resulted in factor structures that looked identical.

Changes in body attitude as a function of posthypnotic suggestions

This study hypothesized that highly hypnotizable Ss who remained amnesic for posthypnotic suggestions to improve body attitude would show greater changes than Ss who were not amnesic. Ss given simulating instructions were used as a comparison group to assess experimental demands. 48 females were screened with the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (Shor & E. Orne, 1962) and assigned to one of 4 conditions: (a) high hypnotizable with amnesia suggestions, (b) high hypnotizable without suggested amnesia, (c) low hypnotizable simulators with amnesia, and (d) low hypnotizable simulators without suggested amnesia. A fifth group was formed of those high hypnotizable Ss who remembered the suggestion despite instructions to the contrary. The Body Attitude Scale (Kurtz, 1966) was administered prior to and 3 days after the experimental suggestions. Results generally demonstrated that high hypnotizable amnesic Ss manifested the greatest attitudinal and phenomenological changes as a result of the posthypnotic suggestion, although conclusions were tempered by performance of simulating Ss. The implications for hypnosis research and clinical practice are discussed.