ABSTRACT
One need not apologize for an interest in exploring and making inferences about observations on the individual consumer of psychological services. There has been a long, rich history of individual subject research in psychology, starting with the psychophysics and sensory psychology studies performed in Europe and the United States during the 1800s (Osgood, 1953; Stevens, 1951). The research methods, mostly relying on extensive within-person replication techniques, were sufficiently rigorous that much of it withstood the tests of replication and generalizability over many individuals (Stevens, 1966). The psychophysics studies were also characterized by their focus on discovering what can be identified as trait characteristics of their subjects, rather than state characteristics.
