IASC

Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities

Details

Purpose

Assesses difficulties in relatedness, identity, and affect control

Authors

John Briere, PhD

Administration Formats

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Additional Details

Add to Your Psychopathology Battery to Assess Adult Clients for Personality Difficulties

The IASC is a self-report measure of an individual’s psychological functioning capacity in the areas of forming and maintaining meaningful relationships, creating a stable sense of personal identity and self-awareness, and the ability to modulate and tolerate negative affect. This instrument is particularly useful with adults who have experienced significant childhood abuse or trauma.

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Features and benefits

  • Helps to identify targets for treatment, such as identity disturbance and affect regulation problems; predicts potential problems that may arise during psychotherapy; and provides clinical data to corroborate diagnoses, especially those involving dysfunctional personality traits or disorders.
  • May prove useful in the assessment of individuals with potential DSM-IV Axis II or personality-level distress or disorder, as well as those with histories of significant childhood neglect, trauma, or attachment disruption. 
  • May alert clinicians to the possibility of treatment disrupting issues (e.g., abandonment concerns, idealization-devaluation cycles, or excessive suggestibility).
  • The 63 items of the IASC are contained in a reusable item booklet. Respondents complete a separate, carbonless answer sheet that facilitates rapid scoring by hand. Each symptom item is rated according to its frequency of occurrence over the prior 6 months, using a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Very Often).
  • The IASC requires approximately 15 to 20 minutes to complete for all but the most clinically impaired individuals. The IASC can be scored and profiled in approximately 10 minutes.
  • Seven 9-item scales
    • Interpersonal Conflicts (IC)
    • Idealization-Disillusionment (ID)
    • Abandonment Concerns (AC)
    • Identity Impairment (II)
    • Susceptibility to Influence (SI)
    • Affect Dysregulation (AD)
    • Tension Reduction Activities (TRA)
  • Normed on 620 individuals from the general population, making it an ideal component of a comprehensive assessment of adult psychopathology.
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Photo of Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities ™
Age Range 18 years to 99+ years
Admin Time 10–15 minutes; 10–15 minutes to score
Qualification Level B

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FAQs

What is the construct of self-capacities?

The construct of “self-capacities” involves the notion that successful adult functioning is partly due to the extent to which the individual is able to accomplish three tasks:

  1. Maintain a sense of personal identity and self-awareness that is relatively stable across affects, situations, and interactions with other people.
  2. Control and tolerate strong (especially negative) affect without resorting to avoidance strategies such as dissociation, substance abuse, or external tension-reducing behaviors.
  3. Form and maintain meaningful relationships with other people who are not disturbed by inappropriate projections, inordinate fear of abandonment, or activities that intentionally or inadvertently challenge or subvert normal “self-other” connections. 

(Kohut, 1977; McCann, & Pearlman, 1990), as modified by Briere (1997b) and reflected in the items of the IASC.

Why should I include a test for self-capacities?

Even if insufficient self-capacities are not the specific targets of psychodynamic, cognitive, or behavioral treatment, they can intrude on the conduct of almost any therapeutic endeavor. Knowledge of which clients are more likely to experience problems can decrease the likelihood that the clinician will be “blind-sided” by the sudden intrusion of, for example, abandonment fears or idealization-devaluation dynamics during treatment. Most importantly, however, altered or reduced self-capacities are a common element of more severe psychological disturbance and are frequently found in clients who were abused, neglected, or otherwise maltreated as children.  A test of self-capacities would indicate the quantitative extent to which the client experiences each of the individual components of what is generally termed “Borderline Personality Disorder,” such as identity confusion or diffusion, affect dysregulation and intolerance, and impaired or chaotic relations with others.