Rorschach assessment of reality testing, affect and object representation of borderline pathology: a comparison of clinical samples.

This study examines the personality functioning of outpatients diagnosed with borderline pathology (BP) compared to a nonborderline pathology Axis I clinical control group (NonBP). Interrater reliability for all variables was in the good or excellent range. Significant differences were found examining Rorschach variables assessing dysphoric affect and affect regulation/experiencing with BP when compared to the Axis I group.

A psychoanalytic exploration of collective trauma among Indigenous Australians and a suggestion for intervention.

Objective: Psychoanalysis is used to explore the effects of the annihilation of culture and how this leads to a loss of identification with a collective subjectivity and triggers catastrophic symptoms including loss of collective hope, the rise of addictive and self-destructive behaviours, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma among Indigenous Australian communities.

Conclusions: I propose restorative educational interventions for young Indigenous children that seek to engage them with ancestral memory, cultural narratives, and a sense of purpose so that healing from historically transmitted trauma may be initiated and a grounded sense of subjectivity restored.

Effects of graduate clinicians' personal therapy on therapeutic alliance.

This study investigates the effects of clinician personal therapy on therapeutic alliance early in treatment. Therapists who had received personal therapy assessed 30 outpatients, and therapists who had not undergone personal therapy assessed 30 outpatients. These groups of patients were matched on key demographic, diagnostic and psychiatric severity data.

Heisenberg, Kandinsky, and the heteromethod convergence problem: lessons from within and beyond psychology.

During the past 100 years, advances in personality assessment have paralleled key events in art and physics; but for the most part, these parallels have gone unrecognized. In this article, I discuss the ways in which 2 movements in 20th-century art (cubism and nonrepresentational painting) and 2 principles from 20th-century physics (the uncertainty principle and the observer effect) combined to create an intellectual context for the process dissociation approach to personality assessment, a research strategy wherein naturally occurring influences on test scores are deliberately manipulated to illuminate underlying response processes. I discuss core elements of a process-focused paradigm for 21st-century personality assessment including (a) the need for researchers to explore test score divergences as well as convergences, (b) a view of the assessor as active shaper (rather than dispassionate observer) of testee behavior, and (c) the importance of integrating personality assessment concepts and methods with ideas and findings from disciplines within and outside psychology.

Do medical students know enough about smoking to help their future patients? Assessment of New York City fourth-year medical students' knowledge of tobacco cessation and treatment for nicotine addiction.

Purpose: Practicing physicians underutilize U.S. Department of Health and Human Services evidence-based approaches to nicotine addiction and treatment.

Beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction: the psychoanalytic method in modern dress.

This study represents a new generation of psychotherapy process research, using multiple perspectives on the data of the analytic situation, including impressions of the treating analyst, ratings of complete sessions by clinical judges, and objective linguistic measures. Computerized measures of language style developed in the framework of multiple code theory were applied to verbatim session recordings from a psychoanalytic case; the measures are illustrated in microanalyses of the process in two sessions. The results show agreement between the linguistic measures and clinical ratings based on a psychoanalytic perspective.

Toward a process-based framework for classifying personality tests: comment on Meyer and Kurtz (2006).

Meyer and Kurtz (2006) argued that the longstanding psychological test labels "objective" and "projective" have outlived their usefulness, and invited further work focusing on alternative terms for these measures. This Comment describes a framework for classifying personality tests based on the psychological processes that occur as people respond to test stimuli. Because an attribution process is involved in responding to both types of measures, those instruments formerly called "objective" tests are labeled self-attribution tests, and those formerly classified as "projective" tests are labeled stimulus-attribution tests.

Therapist affect focus and patient outcomes in psychodynamic psychotherapy: a meta-analysis.

Objective: The authors systematically examined the relationship between therapist facilitation of patient emotional experience/expression and outcome in psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Method: Computer and manual searches were conducted for relevant publications, and 10 independent samples of short-term dynamic psychotherapy were included in a meta-analysis. Data analysis included calculation of an overall effect size of the relationship between therapist affect focus and outcome, statistical significance, and test for homogeneity.

Clinician interventions related to alliance during the initial interview and psychological assessment.

The present review is a comprehensive examination of therapist interventions and characteristics that have been found to positively influence the therapeutic alliance during the psychological assessment or initial interview. A major purpose of this review is to link empirically defined interventions found in the research literature to applied clinical practice so that clinicians from a broad range of perspectives can use these techniques to potentially improve their working relationships with clients during the assessment process. Specific therapist activities and attitudes highlighted by contemporary psychotherapy research are discussed and summarized.

Primal fatherhood and primal rage.

Fatherhood may unconsciously activate repudiated identifications with patriarchal primal fathers in men with progressive social values. These men may consciously cultivate an image of themselves as rebellious nonconformists. These men may wish to raise children who are fiercely independent just like them.

Might the Rorschach be a projective test after all? Social projection of an undesired trait alters Rorschach Oral Dependency scores.

The degree to which projection plays a role in Rorschach (Rorschach, 1921/1942) responding remains controversial, in part because extant data have yielded inconclusive results. In this investigation, I examined the impact of social projection on Rorschach Oral Dependency (ROD) scores using methods adapted from social cognition research. In Study 1, I prescreened 85 college students (40 women and 45 men) with the ROD scale and a widely used self-report measure of dependency, the Interpersonal Dependency Inventory (IDI; Hirschfeld et al.

Contemporary group treatment of combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder.

The contemporary group treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War to the present who suffer from combat-related PTSD is reviewed in light of the dynamic understanding of combat trauma developed during and since World War II. Both dynamic and cognitive behavioral group therapies are explored. The common features of all group treatments of combat PTSD involve the development of trust and the communalization of trauma within a cohesive group.

Clinical utility of early memories as a predictor of early therapeutic alliance.

The present study aims to empirically explore the relationship between clinician-rated early memories (EMs) and patient ratings of alliance that were obtained after a therapeutic model of assessment (TMA; Finn & Tonsager, 1997; Fischer, 1994). This study utilizes the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS; Westen, 1995) to obtain information from early memory narratives about an individual's level of object representations. With data gathered from 57 participants, the authors examined whether an individual's EM narratives can provide insight into his or her object representations and how such material relates to the development of an intimate connection with the therapist.

Borderline pathology and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI): an evaluation of criterion and concurrent validity.

In this study, we examined how patients diagnosed with borderline pathology (BP) would respond on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) Borderline (BOR) scales in relation to patients without BP pathology. In addition, we examined whether the PAI BOR scales would be related to variables on the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS; Hilsenroth, Stein, & Pinsker, 2004; Westen, 1995) derived from early memory narratives. Results indicate that outpatients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.

Increasing executive and "self-soothing" capacities in the treatment of addictive disorders.

Freud noted many years ago (1917/1963, 1933/1964) that the talking cure was developed due to the rather primitive nature of neuroscientific knowledge with regard to the brain and hence might eventually be made unnecessary or irrelevant by subsequent discoveries of the neuropsychological causation of neurotic symptoms. The opposite may be true, however. These discoveries may validate the potential effectiveness of therapeutic work with a wide variety of difficult personality disorders and addictive forms of pathology.

The complex relationship between dependency and domestic violence: converging psychological factors and social forces.

Research indicates that economic dependency in women and emotional dependency in men independently contribute to domestic-partner abuse risk and that high levels of emotional dependency in an abused partner may reduce the likelihood that the victimized person will terminate the relationship. An analysis of psychological factors and social forces that contribute to domestic violence suggests that multimodal intervention strategies are needed to combat this complex problem.

The impulse to infidelity and oedipal splitting.

Freud suggested that the child perceives parental intercourse as an act of infidelity by the desired but unfaithful parent. Parental sexual infidelity is felt to be a major narcissistic injury that gives rise to fantasies of revenge. A defensive organization arises to manage this trauma and its attendant revenge fantasies.

The capacity for dynamic process scale (CDPS) and patient engagement in opiate addiction treatment.

This study examined the relationship between continuation in an opiate treatment program and patient characteristics such as affect regulation, insight, and capacity for interpersonal relations. Participants consisted of 63 patients randomly selected from those completing an initial interview at a short-term heroin detoxification program. Patient characteristics were assessed using the Capacity for Dynamic Process Scale (CDPS).

Clinical utility of the Defensive Functioning Scale in the assessment of depression.

The Defensive Functioning Scale (DFS) and Overall Defensive Functioning score (ODF) have been used as reliable and valid measures of defense structure when applied to clinical narratives. This study aims to replicate and extend positive clinical validity data for the ODF in the assessment of depression and examine the relationship between specific defense levels of the DFS and depressive symptoms. Sixty-nine outpatients who completed the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised and Personality Assessment Inventory were rated on the DFS by trained clinicians.

Assessing progress in analysis interminable.

A case study is provided of a schizoid patient in her mid-sixties who in a lengthy analysis had made significant clinical improvement. The treating analyst's impression of clinical improvement was independently verified through systematic analysis of transcripts of audiotapes of thirty-six sessions over a four-year period of treatment. The patient showed significant improvement on measures of character pathology, object relations, mentalization, and superego anxiety.

A consideration of challenges to psychological assessment instruments used in forensic settings: Rorschach as exemplar.

In this brief primer, we provide an outline of key issues that will help psychologists organize and prepare their expert testimony. These issues include the need to obtain essential sources of research, a review of the actual legal standards regarding admissibility of test data in expert testimony, the nature of the expert relative to the assessment instrument in expert testimony, the nature of legal versus scientific debate, and the examination of appropriate qualifications of expertise when offering legal testimony. In addition, we use a summary of information contained in several recent articles to address challenges directed against forensic psychological testing.

Multimethod Validity Assessment of the SWAP-200 Dysphoric Q-Factor.

The aim of this study was to investigate the convergent validity of the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure Q-Sort Dysphoric Q-Factor with scales from the therapist, the patient, and independent observers. Therapists used the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure Q-Sort to describe their patients after the therapeutic assessment and the first two therapy sessions (when available). Independent observers completed a number of symptom distress, global functioning, and Axis II psychopathology measures after watching videotapes of the therapeutic assessment.