Task and Methods

Abstract

The psychological test portion of the Psychotherapy Research Project is parallel to and independent of the other examinations. It is parallel in that the test examinations were conducted at the same times and for some of the same purposes—to diagnose the psychological situation of the patient, to make predictions, to learn what changes had occurred, and to examine the possible causes and consequences of such change. It is independent in that the research testers and research psychologists made their judgments without reference to sources of information about the patient other than that which was provided by the tests. Both the testing and nontesting members of the Project judged the patients’ intrapsychic processes (called ‘patient variables’), but the research testers and research psychologists judged only these while the nontest sections judged in addition ‘situational and treatment variables.’ (For detailed descriptions and discussions of the overall Project, see Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Vol. 20, pp. 221-78, Vol. 22, pp. 115–66, Vol. 24, pp. 157–216, Robbins & Wallerstein, 1959, Sargent, 1961; Rosen, 1965; Wallerstein, 1966b, 1968.)