Understanding Personality through Projective Testing - Softcover

Tuber City College Of New York; Author Of Attachment Play And Authenticity: Win, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144223511X ISBN 13: 9781442235113

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014

Synopsis

The past forty years have revealed a myriad of theoretical advances to Freud’s original conceptions of the personality. It has also witnessed the continued use of projective methods as a vital means of understanding the what and the how of mental health and psychopathology. Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing provides the reader with a comprehensive framework for linking these revitalized key domains of personality functioning to the quality of responses to projective testing in both children and adults. Six core aspects of personality: two facets of object relations (moving towards and away from self and others); the quality of defense mechanisms; the nature of affect maturity; the integrity of autonomous ego functioning and the capacity for playfulness are defined, articulated, and linked to one another in a reciprocal manner. Four commonly used projective testing methods: the Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM); the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Sentence Completion Test (SCT), and the Animal Preference Test (APT) are then described in detail. Each of these projective methods is in turn presented as dynamically-based tools to indicate the relative performance of the patient across the six core personality domains. Clinical case examples provide both the beginning and more seasoned clinician with a comprehensive psychodynamic paradigm with which to view each of the testing methods, as well as enhanced methods with which to use each of the tests more subtly and hence with greater clinical acumen. A comprehensive battery of projective testing is then assessed through the protocol of a single adult patient, allowing the reader to integrate the value of each of the individual projective methods into a comprehensive assessment of the whole person. Readers will find the book a vital complement to both standard reference works on projective methods as well as books that describe personality along developmental and psychodynamic lines.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Tuber, PhD, ABPP, is professor of psychology and director of clinical training in the doctoral program in clinical psychology of the City University of New York at City College. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Attachment, Play & Authenticity: A Winnicott Primer, and Starting Treatment with Children and Adolescents: A Process-Oriented Guide for Therapists (with Jane Caflisch) as well as over one hundred papers on the interplay between assessment and treatment in children, adolescents, and adults.Understanding Personality through Projective Testing was also selected as a finalist for the Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship (2012).

Review

In the current climate of clinical psychology training in which depth approaches to assessment and treatment are being deemphasized or eliminated (e.g., American Psychological Association Division 12 Presidential Task Force, 1999) in favor of symptom-focused methods, Tuber’s Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing is a welcome and refreshing antidote. Tuber’s volume follows in the tradition of classics on psychoanalytic psychological assessment such as Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer (1968); Schafer (1954); Allison, Blatt, and Zimet (1968); and Lerner (1998). As important and relevant as those texts continue to be, Tuber communicates his ideas and methods in a manner that is more accessible to contemporary graduate students, pre- and postdoctoral trainees, and early career psychologists who may have had less immersion in psychoanalytic theory than their predecessors in past decades. An experienced clinician, teacher, and supervisor, Tuber strives to write as if the reader is 'sitting in my classroom, sharing the dialogue with me' (p. ix), and he is largely successful. ... Tuber has made a meaningful and accessible contribution to the psychological testing literature at a point in time when useful and sophisticated psychoanalytic theory-driven approaches are at risk of being lost (Lerner, 2007). Tuber’s conversational style in communicating complex theoretical and technical ideas exudes passion for psychoanalytic theory and assessment, a generative spirit, and empathy for his patients, students, and readers. Tuber’s book offers hope that future generations of psychologists will appreciate the immense value in this way of thinking and working. Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing would be a highly worthwhile addition to reading lists in assessment seminars for advanced graduate students, interns, and postdoctoral fellows. The value of this book will be further enhanced by classroom time devoted to the thinking along with Tuber in his process of drawing inferences from the data in his detailed case illustrations. (Psychoanalytic Psychology)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 144223511X
• ISBN 13: 9781442235113
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 254