Psychological Testing That Matters: Creating a Road Map for Effective Treatment

Psychological testing is most valuable when it makes a meaningful difference in a person's treatment. This groundbreaking book offers a person- and treatment-centered approach to psychological testing, as opposed to the more common test-centered approach. The result is a clinically nuanced and robust approach to inference making and data synthesis.

The book's four sections parallel the flow of an examiner moving from overview to detail and back to synthesis:

• Part I describes treatment-centered diagnosis;
• Part II focuses on assessment of the patient's psychological capacities;
• Part III shows how to integrate the test information into a working understanding of the patient's problems; and
• Part IV explains how to consolidate test findings and communicate them clearly, using a detailed case example and sample report.

Readers will find much to benefit from in this evidence-based book linking test results to meaningful individualized treatment.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I. Basic Framework

1. Treatment-Centered Diagnosis and the Role of Testing
2. Principles of Inference-Making
3. Test Referral and Administration

II. Key Psychological Capacities to Assess and Where to Look in the Data

4. Reality Testing and Reasoning
5. Emotional Regulation: Balance and Effectiveness
6. Experience of Self and Other: Implications for the Therapeutic Alliance
7. Experience of Self and Other: Narcissistic Vulnerabilities

III. Diagnostic Considerations

8. Underlying Developmental Disruption
9. Assessing Underlying Developmental Disruption: Case Examples

IV. Putting It All Together

10. Communicating Our Findings: Test Report Writing and Feedback
11. Detailed Case Example With Sample Report

References

Index

About the Authors

Anthony D. Bram, PhD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Lexington, MA, where he conducts psychological testing, psychodynamic and cognitive–behavioral therapy, and psychoanalysis with children and adults.

Dr. Bram is a clinical instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He received his doctorate from the University of Kansas and is a graduate of the postdoctoral training program at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, where he was subsequently a staff psychologist.

Dr. Bram completed adult psychoanalytic training at the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute, and he is an advanced candidate in child psychoanalysis in the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.

He has received a fellowship from the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Martin Mayman Award from the Society for Personality Assessment, Scientific Writing Award from the Menninger Clinic, and the Johanna Tabin Book Proposal Prize from APA Division 39 (Psychotherapy).

Mary Jo Peebles, PhD, ABPP, ABPH, did her undergraduate work in psychology at Wellesley College and received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Case Western Reserve University, where her dissertation advisor was Irving Weiner, PhD. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships, one in child and adolescent psychology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, and the other in adult psychology at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

For nearly two decades, she practiced, taught, and supervised psychological testing at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka as a member of Menninger's Psychology Postdoctoral Fellowship Training Committee and as a supervisor and associate professor in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, where she won awards regularly for her teaching and supervision.

Dr. Peebles is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, has trained in family systems therapy, biofeedback, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, is board certified in clinical psychology and clinical hypnosis, and worked as a member of the medical staff at Chestnut Lodge Hospital.

She has given workshops and presentations nationally and internationally on trauma, therapy planning, and psychological testing and is the author of numerous articles on these topics as well as two editions of her book, Beginnings: The Art and Science of Planning Psychotherapy (2002; 2012), which has been translated into Japanese.

Since 2000, Dr. Peebles has been working with children, adolescents and adults in private practice in Bethesda, Maryland.

Regardless of where one falls on the experience-with-testing continuum, Psychological Testing That Matters serves as a productive practice tool for clinical practice.
—New Jersey Psychologist