Where's the Beef? Putting Personality Back Into Personality Assessment

Abstract

This article attempts to demonstrate the value of using a psychoanalytic theory of personality for psychological testing. This approach has more clinical utility than a solely research-based one. It recasts test data into conceptually related constructs that have internal consistency to each other and are directly relevant to psychotherapeutic treatment. Such theoretical recasting serves an organizing function, an integrative function, a clarification function, and a predictive function for the clinical inference process. Furthermore, a psychoanalytically oriented approach to testing allows for the expansion in sources of data that one considers in the testing situation. Five different sources of data emerge from the testing situation once one refocuses on theoretical constructs rather than test signs. These include test scores, test content, the patient-examiner interaction, patient behavior, and examiner countertransference.