Training and Consultation in Psychological Assessment With Professional Psychologists: Suggestions for Enhancing the Profession and Individual Practices.

Once central to the identity and practice of clinical psychology, psychological assessment (PA) is currently more limited in professional practice and generally less emphasized in graduate training programs than in the past. Performance-based personality tests especially are taught and used less, even though scientific evidence of their utility and validity has never been stronger. We review research on training in PA and discuss challenges that contributed to its decreased popularity. We then review continuing education requirements for ethical practice in PA and recommend that PA should be reconceptualized as a specialty best practiced by psychologists who have the resources and time to maintain competency. We offer recommendations about how professional organizations concerned with PA can promote its practice and how individual expert clinicians can assist. We conclude by describing a collaborative model for providing group consultation in PA to practicing psychologists. If implemented widely, this model could help promote PA and raise its standard of practice.

What Torture Survivors Teach Assessors About Being More Fully Human.

This article illustrates the complex sociocultural components in the forensic psychological assessment of a young Ethiopian woman's claim for political asylum due to a well-founded fear of persecution and for relief under the Convention Against Torture. It draws attention to the subtle social and cultural influences in the practice of forensic psychological assessment with an emphasis of reflective practice, which is contextualized in the interpersonal theory of Sullivan. In the interpersonal approach, the essential work of the assessor is to pay careful attention to the microinteractions between the client and the assessor as reflections of the interpersonal (meaning social and cultural) processes, eschewing the illusion of objectivity. In this case study, I illustrate the particular cultural dilemmas for client and assessor in conducting a forensic assessment of psychological trauma, including cross-cultural, gender, and legal difficulties in arriving at an informed, objective, and compassionate assessment of an individual seeking asylum after an especially brutal experience of torture. I argue that collaborative therapeutic assessment methods adapted for forensic practice offer an approach to assessment of psychological trauma that provides more accurate and compassionate assessment than so-called neutral standard forensic assessment practice.

Paul Lerner and the heart of assessment: discussion of articles by Handler, Finn, Leichtman, Husain, and Smith.

This Special Series celebrates the work of late Paul Lerner, a lion of the Rorschach (Rorschach, 1921) and personality assessment. I review and discuss the original articles of Smith (2009/this issue), Handler (2009/this issue), Finn (2009/this issue), Leichtman (2009/this issue), and Husain (2009/this issue) prepared for this Special Series. In each case, I give a brief summary of these articles and then collaboratively attempt to expand on their meaning and implications. I am grateful to these authors for their inspired contributions.

Trauma, torture, and transformation in the forensic assessor.

In this article, I present the case study of an Ethiopian woman, reportedly a victim of torture in her country of origin, who was seeking political asylum in the United States. I evaluated this woman as part of a forensic psychological assessment for Immigration Court. The assessment was conducted to determine whether the woman's descriptions of her torture and the resulting symptoms of psychological trauma were consistent with a credible claim of political persecution. While maintaining a neutral stance required of forensic psychological examiners, I nonetheless had a powerfully transformative experience in the assessment role regarding the experience of human courage. This event led me to reexamine the meaning of neutrality in forensic psychological assessments involving victims of torture and perhaps in other forensic roles as well.

The end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine): comment on Erard.

We review Erard's (this issue) article. We laud him for the measured tone and carefully reasoned position that is taken. Although his main point that The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the new American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Code (2002) need not be seen as disasters for the practice of assessment, we pose several problems with his analysis. In particular, we argue that although his point that test security is not airtight at present is well taken, nonetheless, it is important to set the bar as high as possible to limit breaches in security. Although Erard is correct that more complex instruments may withstand attempts to manipulate the results, many smaller or more focused instruments may be irrevocably damaged. Furthermore, the release of raw test data can have a deleterious effect in the clinical arena, especially in instances in which it could be subject to misinterpretation and misuse. Finally, we criticize the APA for subjugating the interests of the profession to political expediency.