The Trials of Separating Bath Water From Baby: A Review and Critique of the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical Scales

I review the development of the new set of MMPI–2 scales, the Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales (Tellegen et al., 2003). I identify several conceptual and methodological flaws in the construction of these scales, and I discuss the influence of a central shortcoming, the use of an atypical and depressively biased marker for unwanted ("first-factor") variance and its consequences for the RC Scales. I criticize the monograph introducing and describing the development of these scales for multiple important omissions. I provide examples of RC Scales in which relevant variances were overextracted or underextracted in the process of their construction. I introduce and apply the concept of "construct drift" to the RC Scales corresponding to the MMPI–2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) Clinical Scales, Psychasthenia and Hypomania. I conclude that the RC Scales are highly redundant with and function as routinely scored Content scales and that their designation as Clinical Scales is at best ten...