The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)

History

In order to gain an understanding of antisocial personality disorder and treatments used in working with the disorder, is is important to examine changes in the diagnostic criteria and personality traits associated with antisocial personality disorder over time. However, the disorder was not actually listed and defined until the DSM-III in 1980. Prior to that ASD was lumped in with psychopathy and sociopathy. Around the 1970’s psychopathy became the focus at attempts of standardization. Robert Hare developed a diagnostic tool, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) (Pickersgill, 2012). This helped advance the understanding of psychopathology however, it should be used more as a tool for classifying rather than diagnosing the disorder. Hare’s research and development of the PCL-R set up the foundation for

A few criteria that were changed are the criteria for conduct disorder, lacking the ability to function as a responsible parent, and the inability to maintain a monogamous relationship for over a year (Gurley, 2009). Personality traits used to describe psychopathy (lacking empathy, callousness, cynicism, glibness, and superficial charm) were added as traits that an individual with antisocial personality disorder may possess. This emphasized that antisocial personality disorder is meant to be an equivalent diagnosis to psychopathy (Gurley, 2009). The DSM-V only has 5 specific criteria required for a diagnosis with antisocial personality disorder. The criteria include significant impairment in personality functioning ; 7 specific pathological personality traits (manipulativeness, deceitfulness, callousness, hostility, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and risk-taking); the impairments in personality functioning must be relatively stable across time and situations, can’t be better understood as developmental or culturally normative, and cannot be due to the direct physiological effects of any substance or medication (American Psychiatric