ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts of the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of the book. The book illustrates how psychodynamic thinking can be woven into the inference process of psychological assessment across a wide range of professional settings. Psychoanalytic theory, with its history of elegant but abstract concepts requires psychoanalytic assessors to subordinate the temptation of assuming a common understanding of terminology to the priority of communication. The end goal here, however, is collaboration, the translation of abstract to concrete, and in the end, utility and applicability of the report. Assessments also mandate synthesis of many points of reference, including the array of data that arrives through tests and measures, patient-examiner/behavioral observations, the client’s history, the assessor’s self-reflection, and thoughts about the manner in which the reader might experience the report. Each impacts the writer’s attitude toward what to say, how to say it, when to say it, what to emphasize, and what to minimize.
