This guide is a much-needed reference for clinicians on how to use the Rorschach Inkblot Test with senior adults, an essential tool for assessing personality functioning to better identify psychological interventions. The book integrates historical developments, current research, conceptual considerations, and therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Chapters review basic guidelines for the understanding and interpretation of Rorschach variables, including protocol validity; interpretation of structural variables, thematic imagery, and cross-cultural normative data; sequence analysis; and more. The authors then provide 10 case illustrations of how the Rorschach indices of cognitive functioning, emotional experience, interpersonal relatedness, and self-perception can facilitate differential diagnosis and treatment planning in clinical work with older people. These case illustrations are rooted in previously non-existent Rorschach reference data based on an international sample of more than 250 senior adults and a second sample of more than 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Clinicians will come away with a solid empirical basis for distinguishing between normal-range personality functioning and manifestations of psychological disorder in the elderly and for providing beneficial interventions to senior adult patients.

This edited volume provides readers with a deeper knowledge of the growth of personality assessment in North America over the past 40 years through the autobiographies of its most notable figures. Experts provide insights into their professional backgrounds, training experiences, their contributions and approaches to personality assessment, their perceptions of current trends, and their predictions about the future of the field. Each chapter explores topics of deep significance to the writer, fluidly intertwining theory and personal narrative. Beginning clinicians, scholars, and students will gain a better understanding of the major empirical advances that were made during the last generation regarding key questions about the nature of people, the structure of personality traits, and the connections between personality and mental health.

The Handbook of Forensic Rorschach Assessment underscores the unique contribution the Rorschach makes to forensic practice. All of the chapters include the expertise of a licensed practicing forensic psychologist, and offer a systematic approach to personality assessment in presenting use of the Rorschach in specific forensic contexts.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Introduction -- PART I: Understanding and assessing psychotic phenomena -- 1 Psychotic phenomena: Toward a conceptual understanding of reality testing and disordered thinking -- 2 Assessing disordered thinking and psychotic phenomena -- PART II: Rorschach assessment of psychotic phenomena -- 3 Hermann Rorschach's experiment -- 4 Contributions of Rapaport and Holt -- 5 The Thought Disorder Index -- 6 The Comprehensive System and Rorschach Performance Assessment System -- 7 Alternative Rorschach approaches for assessing disordered thinking -- 8 Integrated model of Rorschach signs of disordered thinking -- PART III: Dimensions of disordered thinking -- 9 Disorganization: Problems in focusing, filtering, and language usage -- 10 Illogicality: Problems in reasoning and logic -- 11 Impoverishment in thinking and language -- 12 Awareness of perceptual and reasoning errors -- PART IV: Differential diagnosis of psychotic phenomena on the Rorschach -- 13 Primary psychoses and the Rorschach -- 14 Secondary psychotic phenomena and the Rorschach -- 15 Malingered psychosis and disordered thinking -- 16 Rorschach indications of psychotic phenomena in children and adolescents -- Final Thoughts: Empirical, conceptual, and practical considerations -- Index

This volume demonstrates how multimethod forensic assessment with the Rorschach adds incremental validity, insight, and practical value. Case discussions by leading forensic psychologists illustrate the integration of contemporary Rorschach assessment with the MMPI-2 and MMPI-2-RF, the PAI, and the HCR-20. This text addresses a wide range of forensic applications including child custody, psychological trauma, personal injury, psychotic offenders, competency evaluations, immigration cases, and impression management. It also shows how the recently developed Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) effectively enhances the use of the Rorschach in forensic cases, while offering guidance for Comprehensive System users as well.

As the average age of the population rises, mental health professionals have become increasingly aware of the critical importance of personality in mediating successful adaptation in later life. Personality disorders were once thought to "age out," and accordingly to have an inconsequential impact on the lives of the elderly. But recent clinical experience and studies underscore not only the prevalence of personality disorders in older people, but the pivotal roles they play in the onset, course, and treatment outcomes of other emotional and cognitive problems and physical problems as well. Clearly, mental health professionals must further develop research methods, assessment techniques, and intervention strategies targeting these disorders; and they must more effectively integrate what is being learned from advances in research and theory into clinical practice. Inspired by these needs, the editors have brought together a distinguished group of behavioral scientists and clinicians dedicated to understanding the interaction of personality and aging. Offering a rich array of theoretical perspectives (intrapsychic, interpersonal, neuropsychological, and systems), they summarize the empirical literature, present phenomenological case reports, and review psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and pharmacological treatment approaches. This comprehensive state-of-the-art guide will be welcomed by all those who must confront the complexity and the challenge of working with this population.

This book serves as an up-to-date Rorschach primer and elaborates on the various applications of Rorschach assessment for adolescents with respect to differential diagnosis, forensic consultation, and therapeutic assessment. It opens with three chapters that provide readers with a basic overview and introduction to the topics integrated throughout the text. The first reviews the development and foundations of the Rorschach Inkblot Method; the second discusses key issues in the assessment of adolescents, with particular attention to differentiating patterns of psychopathology from normal developmental variations; and the third presents general considerations in using performance-based assessment instruments in the assessment of personality functioning in adolescence. Later chapters explore the current status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method with respect to theoretical formulations, research findings, and practice guidelines. The final chapter draws on information in the preceding chapters to present a model for Rorschach assessment of adolescents. This model is designed to facilitate accurate and useful formulations of personality functioning that contribute substantially to advancing responsible adolescent development.

Appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the human mind when perceiving an ambiguous stimulus led Dr. Hermann Rorschach to develop his scientific method eighty years ago. Full of gratitude for his brief life and work, the editors hope this volume will stand as an idiographic testament to his brilliance for the Rorschach students of the future. The contributors are clearly the most notable Rorschach clinicians in practice, and their work integrates the Comprehensive System and psychoanalytic methods. This book is organized into four sections. Within each of the first three sections -- devoted to psychotic, borderline, and neurotic disorders respectively -- the editors and invited authors have contributed Rorschach case studies which vertically cut a character pathology, personality disorder, or clinical diagnosis through a particular level of personality organization. The last section charts the enormously varied course that Rorschach work can navigate -- from the understanding of a Nobel laureate, the pain of trauma and transexuality, and the Nazi perversion of youth, to the consensus Rorschach in couple's therapy and cutting edge work in neuropsychology.