ABSTRACT
During the 1990s there was a significant breakthrough in relational diagnosis and assessment. Prior to this time, flowing from an ideology focused on the individual, the tradition of assessment in mental health concentrated almost exclusively on describing disorders and personality characteristics within individuals. Both systems assessing disorders, such as the DSM IV of the American Psychiatric Association and the ICD 9, and systems assessing dimensions of pathology and personality, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-R and Thematic Apperception Test, have been predicated on the assumption that description is best offered at the level of the person in isolation.
