ABSTRACT
Psychiatrists routinely rely on patient self-report to obtain a medical and psychological history, even though researchers have long known that memory is often an unreliable and inaccurate source of information. This chapter provides new evidence from a longitudinal study of autobiographical memory and discusses implications for the development and implementation of appropriate treatment plans and goals. Woodruff and Birren found longitudinal change in perceptions of personality. Adolescents were tested in 1944 using the California Personality Inventory, which is designed to cover major themes of externality, normative regulation of impulse, intellectual ability, and socialization. The chapter represents one part of a longitudinal study concerning the development from adolescence to middle adulthood of a group of essentially normal males. It investigates the stability of memory concerning perceptions of events and relationships that had occurred during adolescence.
