Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

8CHAPTER 1 HISTORICAL TRENDSThe most popular theory of the post-World War I era was psychodynamic personalitytheory as espoused by SigmundFreud (1936) and others. Psychodynamicpersonality theory provided a useful theoreticalframework for the development ofprojective assessment measures due to theconcepts of repression, projection, andother constructs that are entirely consistentwith the use of atypical test stimulifor identifying personality traits (seeChap. 10 for a more extended discussionof the basic assumptions of the projectivetechnique).Association TechniquesThe use of association techniques, such asword association methods, for assessmentpurposes can be traced as far back as thework of Aristotle (DuBois, 1970). In relativelyrecent history, Sir Francis Galtonbegan studying association techniques asearly as 1879. Galton’s contribution to thestudy of association was his introduction ofscientific rigor to the enterprise. He usedexperimental methods to study associationmethods, including quantitative scaling ofthe results (DuBois, 1970).Subsequently, Kraepelin, Wundt, Cattell,Kent, and Rosanoff studied the associationsof patients and research participantsto word lists, recording such variablesas response time and type of association.The latter names, Kent and Rosanoff, maybe least familiar to many readers becausethe other names are linked with the illustrioushistory of intellectual assessment.Kent and Rosanoff made their contributionsolely to the study of associations bydeveloping a list of 100 stimulus words andsystematically recording the associationsof 1,000 normal subjects (DuBois, 1970).This effort represents an important initialattempt at developing norms to whichresearchers and clinicians could comparethe responses of clinical subjects.The renowned psychoanalyst CarlJung made extensive use of associationtechniques for the study of personality. Inan address at Clark University in 1909, hedescribed his research efforts in detail andprovided some insight into the types ofinterpretations commonly made of thesemeasures. Jung described his associationword list as a formulary. His list consistedof 54 words including head, to dance, ink,new, foolish, and white. According to Jung(1910), normality could be distinguishedfrom psychopathology with this formularyusing variables such as reaction timeand response content. In his speech, heprovided a transcript of the responses ofa normal individual and of a “hysteric.”A sampling of their associations to theformulary follows:Stimulus Normal HystericalTo sin Much This is totallyunfamiliar tome, I do notrecognize itTo pay Bills MoneyBread Good To eatWindow Room BigRich Nice Good,convenientFriendly Children A manAs noted previously for other measures,reaction time to the stimulus words wasalso interpreted by Jung. He gave a glimpseof one such interpretation in the followingquote:The test person waives any reaction; for themoment he totally fails to obey the originalinstructions, and shows himself incapable ofadapting himself to the experimenter. If thisphenomenon occurs frequently in an experiment,it signifies a higher degree of disturbancein adjustment (p. 27).