Several models focused on the severity of personality disorders (PD) have been proposed as an alternative to the traditional categorical approach, confirming their high predictive value in the evaluation of social functioning and comorbidity with other disorders. In this work, we examined the relationship between personality severity (accumulation of different traits of pathological personality and intensity of each of them) and degree of symptomatic disturbance in a sample of 142 patients. The bivariate analysis confirms that the high personality severity group has higher level of affective (p= 0,036) and general (p= 0,013) disruption. However, multivariate analysis found that the intensity of schizotypal, self-destructive and passive-aggressive traits explains symptomatic disturbance better than the accumulation of traits. These findings are discussed in the context of conceptual and evaluative complexity of the personality disorder construct. The search for an appropriate index of severity is still pending in the effort to improve the planning and objective provision of social and health resources.