Methods in. Clinical Psychology. Projective Assessment. Volume 1

Transcription

1 Methods in Clinical Psychology Volume 1 Projective Assessment

2 METHODS IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY Volume 1 Volume 2 Projective Assessment Prediction and Research

3 Methods in Clinical Psychology Volume 1 Projective Assessment Robert R. Holt Research Center for Mental Health New York University Plenum Press New York and London

4 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Holt, Robert R Methods in clinical psychology. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Clinical psychology. 2. Personality assessment. 3. Prediction (Psychology) 4. Psychological research. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Projective techniques - Collected works. 2. Psychology, Clinical- Methods - Collected works. 3. Research Methods - Collected works. WM145 H758m] RC467 H ISBN ISBN {eBook) DOl / First Printing - May 1978 Second Printing - March Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher

5 Acknowledgments The author and the publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reprint, with revisions and additions, the author's previously published articles in this volume. American Psychological Association The accuracy of self-evaluations: Its measurement and some of its personological correlates [pp ], originally published in Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1951,15, Creativity and primary process: A study of adaptive regression by F. Pine and R. R. Holt [pp ], originally published in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1960, 61, Duke University Press Individuality and generalization in the psychology of personality [pp. 7-29], originally published in Journal of Personality, 1962,30, Grune & Stratton, Inc. A blind interpretation of Doe's TAT [pp ], originally published in Edwin S. Shneidman et al., Eds. Thematic Test Analysis. New York: Grune & Stratton, Inc., 1951, pp.l01-112;also, , Journal of Psychological Researches Cognitive controls and primary processes [pp ], originally published in Journal of Psychological Researches, 1960,4, Menninger Foundation An inductive method of analyzing defense of self-esteem [pp ], originally published in Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1951,15, Prentice-Hall, Inc. The Thematic Apperception Test [pp ],originally published in H. H. and G. L. Anderson, Eds. An Introduction to Projective Techniques. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1951, pp Society for Personality Assessment, Inc. An approach to the validation of the Szondi test through a systematic study of unreliability [pp ], originally published in Journal of Projective Techniques, 1950,14, A blind interpretation of Jay's TAT [pp ]' originally published in Journal ofprojective Techniques, 1952,16, Formal aspects of the TAT-A neglected resource [pp ], originally published in Journal of Projective Techniques, 1958,22, Gauging primary and secondary processes in Rorschach responses [pp ], originally published in Journal of Projective Techniques, 1956,20, Charles C Thomas The nature of TAT stories as cognitive products: A psychoanalytic approach [pp ], originally published inj. Kagan and G. Lesser, Eds. Contemporary Issues in Thematic Apperceptive Methods. Springfield: Charles C Thomas, 1961, pp University of Nebraska Measuring libidinal and aggressive motives and their controls by means of the Rorschach test Ipp ], originally published in D. Levine, Ed. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966, pp

6 To the memory of my sister DOROTHY WATSON WHITELAW whose courage, serenity, and concern for others live in the minds of all who knew her

7 Preface I do not think of myself as primarily interested in method, but in the substance of psychology. Nevertheless, our discipline has such difficulties in coming to grips with its substance that I have found myself getting involved in fww to do it persistently and since the beginning of my career. That career has been divided between diagnosis and research, the balance between them swinging gradually from the former to the latter. To the astonishment of many of my students and colleagues, I have never become a psychotherapist nor a psychoanalyst, though I have looked closely over the shoulders of many friends at their work, have attended continuous case seminars, and have participated in research on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis enough to feel that I have a pretty good grasp of what that kind of endeavor is like. So I have been writing about method, diagnostic and investigative, for over 25 years, and was happy to accept the suggestion of Seymour Weingarten, of Plenum Press, that I publish a collection of these papers. What has ended up as two volumes was originally conceived as one, for I feel that there is more similarity of method in assessment, prediction, and research than appears on the surface. The General Introduction and Chapter 1 of Volume 1 state the point of view of the entire work. Nevertheless, it became apparent that the papers on projective assessment were enough to constitute one volume, while those on the closely related methodological topics of the clinical-statistical prediction controversy and investigative techniques made up a well-balanced companion. Realizing that not every reader would want to buy both volumes, I have tried to make each self-contained while repeating a minimum of material from the other. Taken together, the two volumes do not include everything I have written on either diagnostic testing or research methods. Some of my earliest publications were simplistic or naive enough not to be worth reprinting; others simply did not fit in for one reason or another. Neither volume pretends to be comprehensive in a second sense, either, for I have not tried to discuss all aspects of clinical methods other than therapeutic. I have, however, made some effort to increase the usefulness of this collection by ix

8 x PREFACE adding to it four chapters not previously published, and by rewriting and updating some of the other chapters rather extensively. I have also included (at the end of Volume 2) a complete personal bibliography for the curious or those who would like to see what kinds of investigative and theoretical substance has engaged me in between the writing of the papers here collected. In addition, I have prepared brief introductions to all of the chapters intended to give the context of each and help knit them together into something more than a set of reprints. A good many of these papers have grown out of my teaching, as is doubtless true for most academics. That applies to three of the chapters (Vol. 1, No.3; Vol. 2, Nos. 9 and 10) that are now published for the first time here. I do not expect that many readers will find either the first or the second of these three very rewarding simply to read through. They are intended as resources or reference works, and I do not apologize for thei.r low level of readability. The second volume's Chapter 9, in particular, is a progress report, which threatens to sprout a new shoot every time I review another complex or innovative report of research; no doubt I shall continue to add to and revise it, and welcome the suggestions of readers. Critical and constructive feedback about anything in this book is welcome, and I pledge myself to respond to anyone who wants to engage in conversation or correspondence about any matter of diagnostic or research method discussed here. In general, aside from Chapters 1 and 2 of Volume 1, I have tried to resist the temptation to rewrite; but I have made a few terminological changes to bring the theoretical stance of the papers more or less up to date. That has meant deleting most metapsychological concepts, changing terms like "need" and "drive" to "motive" or "wish," and the like. It is another small indication of the superfluousness of the metapsychologicallevel of theorizing that it could usually be merely excised without leaving a gap. Where alterations of the text have gone beyond the just-indicated changes and minor corrections of phrase in the service of clearer communication, I have set square brackets around contemporary interpolations, including footnotes added now. The papers in this volume are about personality assessment in general, with a particular focus on psychodiagnosis by means of projective techniques. Ever since my Topeka training in diagnostic testing, I have firmly advocated that psychodiagnosticians should use well-rounded batteries including tests of intelligence and concept formation, and a variety of more expressive techniques by no means limited to the most popular, the Rorschach and TAT. Yet on looking back I find that most of my scattered writings on assessment methods (as distinct from findings) concentrate on these two tests. This collection therefore is not presented as a comprehensive work on projective techniques but as a focused and supplementary one; in no way does it compete with either Diagnostic Psychological Testing (Rapaport, Schafer, & Gill, 1968) or Assessing Personality (Holt, 1971c). It expands, exemplifies, and in some respects updates the general point of view

9 PREFACE xi expressed in those books. I hope that graduate students and working professionals in personality assessment alike will find it useful for its sustained effort to supply a theoretically grounded basis for understanding the significance of assessment data. The book starts off with a paper on individuality and generalization in personology, because I feel that that,piece provides a theoretical rationale for personality assessment. Then follow six chapters on the T AT (Thematic Apperception Test), a substitute for the book on that test's interpretation I once planned to write. I have fleshed out Chapters 2 and 3 from my teaching notes so that they and the two following chapters contain most of the generalizations I can make about administering the TAT and making sense out of the stories. The rest has to be transmitted case by case, in a way I have tried to exemplify in Chapters 6 and 7. Chapters 8 through 11 deal with my way of looking at the Rorschach test, using a person's responses as a way of assessing his access to primaryprocess thinking and the ways he controls it or defends himself against it. The reader can trace several important stages in the development of this method and get an overview of the approach and of the information about people it yields. Unfortunately, full directions for scoring occupy so much space that another entire book will have to be devoted to them, which I hope to publish in the next few years. This volume ends with three miscellaneous empirical studies in personality assessment. Chapter 12 is included partly for the relevance of its general message about reliability for other methods of assessment, and partly to remind psychologists that despite all attempts to dismiss it, the Szondi test remains a challenge to our understanding-less an easily applicable test than a reminder that there is much we do not fully understand about what goes on in the process of perceiving another person's face. The final two chapters deal with methods of evaluating aspects of the self. Neither technique is projective in the usual sense, though both exemplify the general point of view toward measuring and understanding qualities of fellow human beings that I have tried to detail in the earlier chapters. They are among my earliest papers, yet the kind of multiform personality assessment they deal with still seems to be news to some colleagues who did not share my good fortune of having worked intensively at the Harvard Psychological Clinic and the Menninger Foundation. Readers of this volume may be particularly interested in the first five chapters of Volume 2, on the controversy over clinical and statistical prediction and measurement. They constitute a complete collection of all that I have written on this topic. I realize that many graduate courses on personality assessment spend some time on the controversy, but it actually has very little to do with learning how to understand people (which is the focus of this volume) and a lot to do with attaining clarity on methodological issues (which occupy the rest of Volume 2). Hence I put them in the other volume. Since 1962, all of my work (including the composition of Chapters 3 and

10 xii PREFACE 11 of Volume 1, 1, 4, 5, and 7-10 of Volume 2) has been supported by a Public Health Service Research Career Program Award (K06 MH 12455), which I am happy to acknowledge. I express my gratitude to NIMH for the many ways this award has facilitated my work, including the semester of leave (fall, 1976) during which I put the finishing touches on this collection. I am grateful, as well, to my colleagues at the Research Center for Mental Health for the stimulating setting they have provided for me to do most of the work recorded here, and to the many students in my courses on the interpretation of the T AT and various seminars and courses on research methods, for their helpful criticism and stimulation. Sponsoring or serving on the dissertation committees of many graduate students of clinical psychology has taught me a great deal of what I have tried to set down here concerning research. I would not have been able to learn from that experience, however, if it had not been for the didactic and practicum training in psychodiagnosis I received from such great teachers as Henry A. Murray, Robert W. White, and David Rapaport, and the tacit knowledge they enabled me to absorb by working alongside them. In that way I gained a great deal from close association in Topeka with Martin Mayman and Roy Schafer for periods of time that seem in retrospect all too brief. From these same men, and from colleagues in the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation-Paul Bergman, Margaret Brenman, Sibylle Escalona, Merton Gill, Louisa Howe, George Klein, and Lester Luborsky-I had most of my training in methods of research in clinical psychology. But I have gained a good deal from working with my statistician friends Daniel Horn, Jacob Cohen, Mark Fulcomer, and Noel Dunivant, as well. Fred Pine and Edwin S. Shneidman have earned my special thanks for allowing me to include parts of their work in Volume 1. Mrs. Bettie Brewer, paragon among secretaries, has my lasting gratitude for the many ways in which her serene competence and cheerful unflappability have made all of my work easier as well as for special efforts to bring this book into reality. I am grateful also to Mary Ann Dishman for the retyping of several chapters, and to Robyn Dawes, Irene Kaus, and David Wolitzky for a critical reading of individual chapters. It is not possible to specify the many ways in which a family support, encourage, and motivate the writing of a book, particularly one that collects the labors of several decades. Concretely, Joan and Danny helped with the index, but I want them and Michael to know my appreciation of many more important though less tangible ways in which they help get all my jobs done. New York Robert R. Holt

11 Contents Contents of Volume 2... Xlll General Introduction Individuality and Generalization in the Psychology of Personality: A Theoretical Rationale for Personality Assessment and Research... 5 The TAT 2 The Thematic Apperception Test: Rationale, Administration, and Interpretation A Normative Guide to the Use of the TAT Cards The Nature of TAT Stories as Cognitive-Affective Products: A Psychoanalytic Approach Formal Aspects of the TAT -A Neglected Resource A Blind Interpretation of Doe's TAT (with extracts of independent case data) (with Edwin S. Shneidman) A Blind Interpretation of jay's TAT {with extracts of independent case data) (with Edwin S. Shneidman) The Rorschach 8 Gauging Primary and Secondary Processes in Rorschach Responses Cognitive Controls and Primary Processes Creativity and Primary Process: A Study of Adaptive Regression (with Fred Pine) xiii

12 xiv CON'IENTS 11 Measuring Libidinal and Aggressive Motives and Their Controls by Means of the Rorschach Test Other Methods 12 An Approach to the Validation of the Szondi Test through a Systematic Study of Unreliability The Accuracy of Self-Evaluations: Its Measurement and Some of Its Personological Correlates An Inductive Method of Analyzing Defense of Self-Esteem References Name Index..., 331 Subject Index

13 Contents of Volume 2 Prediction 1 A Historical Survey of the Clinical-Statistical Prediction Controversy Clinical and Statistical Prediction: A Reformulation and Some New Data Clinical Judgment as a Disciplined Inquiry Yet Another Look at Clinical and Statistical Prediction: Or, Is Clinical Psychology Worthwhile? Clinical and Statistical Measurement and Prediction: How Not to Survey Its Literature Research 6 A Clinical-Experimental Strategy for Research in Personality Experimental Methods in Clinical Psychology Nonexperimental Methods of Research in Clinical Psychology Criteria for Evaluating Research in Psychology and Psychiatry The Problem of Values in SCience Bibliography..., References Name Index Subject Index xv