ABSTRACT
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MMPI Work on the instrument that was to become the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was begun in 1937 by Stark R.Hathaway, a psychologist, and J.C. McKinley, a neuropsychiatrist. The test authors were motivated to develop a “personality inventory” by their pursuit of several objectives. First, they had noticed that a large proportion of patients presenting for medical treatment manifested “one or more complaints that turn out to be psychoneurotic in nature” (McKinley & Hathaway, 1943, p. 161). The two test authors sought to develop an instrument that would be useful in identifying and describing these patients in a manner that was more efficient and effective than the psychiatric interview techniques traditionally used for psychological evaluations of medical patients. Apparently, Hathaway also believed that such an instrument might assist researchers in evaluating the efficacy of new treatment interventions by allowing for the systematic matching and evaluation of treatment groups. For example, Hathaway (1964), in reference to the use of insulin therapy, which was prevalent in the 1930s, noted:
Finally, Hathaway was also interested in the development of a personality assessment instrument that could assess changes in symptomatology across time. Further, when such a measure was administered at various stages of the treatment process, it would provide the clinician with an index of therapeutic change. In this regard, Hathaway (1965) stated that the MMPI was designed to serve as an “objective aid in the routine psychiatric case workup of adult patients and as a method of determining the severity of the condition. As a corollary to this, the inventory was expected to provide an objective estimate of psychotherapeutic effect and other changes in the severity of their conditions over time” (p. 463).
