Therapeutic Assessment With Adults

Therapeutic Assessment is a short-term intervention in which traditional psychological tests are used collaboratively with clients to help them understand themselves better and find solutions to their persistent problems.

In its underlying philosophy, Therapeutic Assessment is related to humanistic and human-science psychology, to narrative, interpersonal, and systemic models of psychotherapy, and to intersubjectivity theory. However, Therapeutic Assessment also uses techniques from many schools of psychotherapy, including cognitive therapy, behavior therapy, psychodynamic therapy, interpersonal therapy, and Gestalt therapy.

In this video, Dr. Stephen E. Finn demonstrates how the core values of Therapeutic Assessment — collaboration, respect, humility, compassion, openness, and curiosity — are all used to help a client acknowledge and process the dilemma of change and consider viable alternative ways of dealing with difficulties.

Therapeutic Assessment (TA) is a short-term intervention in which traditional psychological tests are used collaboratively with clients to help them understand themselves better and find solutions to their persistent problems.

TA differs from traditional psychological assessment, the main goal of which is to diagnose disorders, plan treatments, and evaluate the efficacy of interventions; TA can serve all these purposes as well, but its main goal is to facilitate positive changes in clients.

Stephen Finn and his colleagues developed TA based on the work of other pioneers of collaborative psychological assessment, such as Constance Fischer and Leonard Handler. TA is a semi-structured approach, with a series of steps that may or may not be used in a particular assessment.

Clients are involved in all parts of a TA, from determining its goals, discussing the possible meanings of test results, experimenting with new ways of managing problems in living, preparing written summaries, and disseminating test results to other professionals.

TA can be used with many types of clients: inpatients, outpatients, adult individuals, couples, young children, adolescents, families, and business or work groups.

A series of controlled research studies have shown that TA can be helpful with many types of clients with different types of problems: depression, anxiety, psychosis, complex trauma, eating disorders, chronic pain, alcohol abuse, etc.

In some studies, TA has been associated with a reduction in symptoms or an increase in hope and self-esteem for clients. In other research, TA has promoted alliance and satisfaction in subsequent psychotherapy.

In its underlying philosophy, TA is related to humanistic and human-science psychology, to narrative, interpersonal, and systemic models of psychotherapy, and to intersubjectivity theory. However, it uses techniques from many schools of psychotherapy, including cognitive therapy, behavior therapy, psychodynamic therapy, interpersonal therapy, and gestalt therapy.

The core values of TA are collaboration, respect, humility, compassion, openness, and curiosity. TA clinicians use psychological tests as "empathy magnifiers" that help them understand behaviors, characteristics, and experiences of clients that others find puzzling, off-putting, or frightening.

By illuminating clients' dilemmas of change regarding such behaviors, TA helps clients discover and try out viable alternative ways of dealing with their difficulties.

Stephen E. Finn, PhD, founder of the Center for Therapeutic Assessment, is a licensed clinical psychologist in practice in Austin, Texas, a clinical associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, senior researcher and director of training at the European Center for Therapeutic Assessment at Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and director of training at the Asian Center for Therapeutic Assessment in Tokyo, Japan.

He has published more than 65 articles and chapters on psychological assessment, psychodiagnosis, and other topics in clinical psychology, and is the author of In Our Clients' Shoes: Theory and Techniques of Therapeutic Assessment (Erlbaum, 2007), A Manual for Using the MMPI-2 as a Therapeutic Intervention (1996, University of Minnesota Press), and (with Hale Martin) Masculinity and Femininity in the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A (2010, University of Minnesota Press). He is also co-editor, with Constance Fischer and Leonard Handler, of Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment: A Casebook and Guide (2012, Wiley).

Dr. Finn received his PhD in clinical psychology in 1984 from the University of Minnesota. He is a fellow of APA and of the Society of Personality Assessment, for which he served as president in 2002–2004.

Dr. Finn is the recipient of the 2011 Bruno Klopfer Award from the Society of Personality Assessment for distinguished lifetime contributions to the field of personality assessment.

• Finn, S. E. (1996). A manual for using the MMPI–2 as a therapeutic intervention. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Finn, S. E. (2007). In our clients' shoes: Theory and techniques of therapeutic assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Finn, S. E. (2011). Journeys through the valley of death: Multimethod psychological assessment and personality transformation in long-term psychotherapy. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93, 123–141.
• Finn, S. E. (2012). Implications of recent research in neurobiology for psychological assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment, 94, 440–449.
• Finn, S. E., & Kamphuis, J. H. (2006). Therapeutic assessment with the MMPI–2. In J. N. Butcher (Ed.), MMPI–2: A practitioners guide (pp. 165–191). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
• Finn, S. E., & Martin, H. (2013). Therapeutic assessment: Using psychological testing as brief therapy. In Geisinger, K. F. (Editor-in-Chief.), APA handbook of testing and assessment in psychology, vol. 2 (pp. 453–465). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
• Finn, S. E., & Tonsager, M. E. (1997). Information-gathering and therapeutic models of assessment: Complementary paradigms. Psychological Assessment, 9, 374–385.
• Finn, S. E., Fischer, C. T., & Handler, L. (Eds.) (2012). Collaborative/therapeutic assessment: A casebook and guide. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

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APA Books

• APA Handbook of Testing and Assessment in Psychology
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• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques and Strategies
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• Personality Disorders: Toward Theoretical and Empirical Integration in Diagnosis and Assessment
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• Psychological Testing That Matters: Creating a Road Map for Effective Treatment
  Anthony D. Bram and Mary Jo Peebles
• The Rorschach Inkblot Test: An Interpretive Guide for Clinicians
  James P. Choca
• A Student's Guide to Assessment and Diagnosis Using the ICD-10-CM: Psychological and Behavioral Conditions
  Edited by Jack Schaffer and Emil R. Rodolfa
• Using the MMPI–2 in Forensic Assessment
  James N. Butcher, Giselle A. Hass, Roger L. Greene, and Linda D. Nelson