ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with appreciation of the power and potential of psychological assessment. When the author first began speaking to groups of psychologists about the power of psychological assessment, he feared he would be “preaching to the choir.” However, he also learned that many psychological assessors had never thought about psychological assessment as anything beyond a tool for diagnosis and treatment planning. First, we have to rid ourselves and our profession of the view of psychological assessment as a semiskilled technical enterprise conducted by slightly schizoid people who would have been therapists if only they liked humans as much as numbers. Sometimes we want to ignore this, to simplify our jobs, and so we can administer more tests, get more money, and make our bosses happy. Second, every chance we get, we have to tell people what psychological assessment really can be, and encourage our satisfied clients to spread the word.
