Research on personality disorder (PD) diagnostic reliability, comorbidity, and treatment confirms that PD diagnoses lack discriminant validity: Our ability t o describe dfierent PDs in an abstract sense has outstripped our ability t o diagnose them accurately in real-world clinical settings. Here an alternative model of PD diagnosis is presented wherein three types of information are coded on h i s 11: (a) an overall rating of level of personality pathology, (b) separate intensity and impairment ratings for each relevant PD dimension, and (c) a listing of personality traits (including PDrelated traits) that enhance adaptation and functioning. Possible objections to the alternative model are considered (e.g., problems of diagnostician compliance, d i dplinewide resistance t o a new diagnostic framework),and advantages of the model over the cumnt diagnostic system are discussed (e.g., greater heuristic value, increased predictive validity).

A group of patients with mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) were HLA and immunoglobulin allotyped. We found that the incidence of DR4 in the patient group was increased compared with that in the normal controls, but the increase was restricted to the subgroup of patients with arthritis. The age at onset of MCTD was lower in patients with DR4 and higher in patients with DR2 compared with patients who did not have these antigens. Al, B8, and DR3 were more frequent, but not significantly so, in the MCTD patient group. We also found that there was a significant perturbation of the Gm allotype frequencies in patients with MCTD.