You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Under this unassuming tide the authors set out to present a detailed interpretation of a battery of tests in order to arrive at a ‘meaningful description of personality functioning’. The theoretical framework is that of psychoanalytic ego-psychology.
The tests were given to a patient, Mrs T., during her stay in hospital. The hospital setting is described as one in which ‘intensive psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy and milieu treatment’ were prominent.
The book, written as an introduction to advanced clinical psychology students, is also addressed to clinicians interested in the subject matter. Thus it will be of interest to analytical psychologists, although those without previous knowledge of psychological testing can hardly be expected to familiarize themselves with the scoring side of the tests to which the authors rightly attach much weight.
Based on the psychodiagnostic work of David Rapaport and Roy Schafer, the authors' clinical approach appears hardly distinguishable from Schafer's. Their special contribution is the detailed and minute presentation of a single case, including a re-test analysis after two and a half years, several months before the patient's discharge from hospital. A postscript presents the reader with a short diary of Mrs T., an interview of the psychologist with her therapist and a follow-up of the patient.
The basic test battery, compared to that used by Schafer, has been reduced to three tests, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and the Rorschach test. It might be of interest that a cognitive test such as the WAIS is largely used to examine the ‘maintenance of ego-boundaries’ and to explore the extent to which ‘primitive fantasies and wishes’ might have invaded ‘reality oriented thought’.
Little information has been supplied about the theoretical framework of ego-psychology. It also seems unsatisfactory that, in an analytically-oriented book, transference problems, fruitfully explored b