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Repeated attempts to place individuals along a continuum with respect to their characteristic modes of response to threatening stimuli led to the concept of a behavioural dimension of repressionsensitization. Individuals' scores on various measures of repression-sensitization (R-S) have been shown to be related to a number of extra-test behaviours, including recognition of threatening perceptual stimuli, tendency to recall successes better than failures, clinical behaviour patterns, and the tendency to describe oneself in negative terms (Byme, 1964). Similarly, Eysenck (e.g. Eysenck & Rachman, 1965) has attempted to relate subjects' scores on the test dimensions of neuroticism and introversion-extraversion to conditionability and thus to an individual's likelihood of developing dysthymic as opposed to hysterical or sociopathic disorders. There are many similarities between Eysenck's descriptions of individuals having extreme extraversion scores and the descriptions of certain characteristics of repressors and sensitizers. However, the few attempts to relate scores on these two test dimensions have generally been inconclusive (Byme, 1964). The present study was intended to investigate the relation of these three personality dimensions to suicidal behaviour, and especially, to the degree of suicidal behaviour. Subjects for this study were 26 male and 46 female graduate students at the university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who had either attempted suicide or who had seriously entertained the possibility of suicide and who had volunteered for 'additional research on suicide '. (Details concerning the identification and testing procedures can be found in Colson, 1970.) Table I presents the mean scores and standard deviations of subjects on the extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N) scales of the Maudsley Personality Inventory (U.S. edition) and a &-item Facilitation-Inhibition Scale (Ullmann, 1962), a measure of R-S, as well as their comparison with the norms for these scales. MPI norms used were those reported in the Manual (Knapp, 1962) for 'University Students, American Norm Group' (n= 1064); norms for the R-S scale were based on scores reported by Byrne (in Ullmann, 1962) for 47 unselected college males. All scores differed significantly from their respective norms in the directions of greater neuroticism, introversion, and sensitization. In fact, the mean R-S scores for this non-patient student sample were almost identical to those reported by Ullmann for his original sample of hospitalized Veterans' Administration neuropsychiatric patients. The extreme mean scores on the MPI neuroticism scale and their high correlation with R-S scores (I = 0.823 ; P < 0.001) are consistent with expectations for two such measures of manifest anxiety (Bendig, 1957; Wiggins, 1964). The deviant E scores in the direction of greater introversion are in accord with Eysenck's conceptualization of persons manifesting anxiety and dysthymic disorders in general as introverted. In addition, males were significantly more introverted than...

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