ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how Psychological Assessment Taught Compassion and Firmness It focuses on learning compassion and firmness because these are two of the most important ways assessment has changed the author. The author was assigned to do a personality assessment with a male client who had been admitted recently to the inpatient psychiatry ward following a suicide attempt. To do jobs well, we must continuously confront our inner shadows and courageously say things to people that no one has said before. This work takes energy, lots of support from others, and an ability to appreciate and even be amused by life’s individualized, “remedial classroom”- by which our tendency to create and encounter the same life lessons over and over until we master them sufficiently to move on to the next. Psychotherapists face a similar challenge to identify on some level with their clients. Assessors get asked to comprehend and explain the clients that no one else can understand.
