ABSTRACT
Aft er tests are selected, administered, and scored, the integrative process of personality assessment begins. Th rough the integrative process, the clinician brings together clinical judgment, theory, and understanding of test scores in an eff ort to understand the person, their behavior, and his or her phenomenological world. Th is melding of multiple realms of knowledge makes personality assessment more complex, challenging, and powerful than mere psychometric testing (Handler & Meyer, 1998). Th e objective of psychological assessment is to answer meaningful questions about real people (usually to predict or explain their behavior). However, real people are complex, dynamic beings capable of a seemingly infi nite array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To bring some degree of order to this complexity and allow us to answer specifi c questions, assessment psychologists measure individuals along known dimensions and traits. Th is measurement process reduces the complex, real person to their psychometric standing along a few defi ned variables (such as their degree of extroversion, depression, and verbal intelligence). Th e integrative process of psychological assessment occurs when we combine our test, thereby “reassembling” the person and writing a comprehensive report that captures (some of) the uniqueness of the individual.
