2-Day WORKSHOP: Psychological Testing that Matters: Creating a Road Map for Effective Treatment         

Psychological testing is most valuable to the extent that it makes a meaningful difference in a person’s treatment. Too often, though, testing falls short as treatment implications described in test reports are generic, unelaborated, or would have been obvious without the time and money invested in the evaluation. In this workshop, Dr. Anthony Bram will present a person- and treatment-centered — as opposed to the more common test-centered — approach to psychological testing aimed to redress this. This workshop will take participants through a way of thinking about testing from the eliciting and clarifying questions posed by the referring colleague through the written report and other feedback. Specific topics include: (1) the concept of treatment-centered diagnosis, (2) principles of inference-making, (3) how to assess crucial ego functions (reality testing, reasoning, emotional regulation, relatedness/alliance potential), linking each to their relevance in treatment planning, (4) how to make use of the patient-examiner relationship as data source and means of hypothesis testing, and (5) use of the inference map as a tool to organize data to refine our formulation and treatment implications. There will be discussion of assessment emphasizing the Rorschach (R-PAS) but also the TAT, Wechsler tests, as well as the patient-examiner relationship as key data sources.