The authors used the Reciprocal Attachment Questionnaire (RAQ) to assess the attachment characteristics of 90 participants drawn from a clinical population, diagnosed with either borderline personality disorder (BPD; 56%) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD; 44%). The aim was to investigate and confirm the conception of borderline personality disorder as involving a profoundly insecure attachment, as illustrated by the DMS-IV criterion of “frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment”.

Results indicated participants with BPD scored significantly higher that those with OCPD on compulsive care-seeking and angry withdrawal but were not significantly different on compulsive care-giving. Using an alternative decomposition of the scale, BPD participants scores significantly higher that OCPD participants on lack of availability, fear of loss, use of attachment figure and separation protest.

These results generally supported the conceptions being examined. The authors note that these results concur with other findings that BPD patients in clinical practice are likely to perceive the therapist as rejecting, alternating between care-seeking and angry withdrawal, and to repeatedly change therapists.