James Neal Butcher

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The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Revised (MMPI-2) is the most widely researched and broadly used personality assessment instrument in psychology. This guide was written for the novice test user, nonpsychology professional, and student of clinical and personality assessment, assuming no testing or clinical background. Offering an interpretive strategy that readers can easily follow to integrate hypotheses about clients, Butcher investigates the developmental rationale and the broad personality and symptomatic measures of the instrument. Generously illustrated with case material, the various measures of the MMPI-2 are clearly explained. Also included is a useful strategy for writing MMPI-2 based personality descriptions.

James Butcher has assembled a highly respected group of contributors from academia, managed care, and full-time clinical practice to discuss the importance of psychological assessment, particularly through the use of MMPI-2. They argue that this assessment plays an indispensable role in managed care, both as an essential tool for evaluating the effectiveness of therapy and as a factor in the structuring and shortening of therapy. By providing working examples of psychological treatment in the context of managed care, this book shows that the most effective treatments use personality assessment as their foundation.

"Persons of Hispanic origin are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Practitioners involved in personality assessment will undoubtedly work with Hispanic clients who may be grappling with low English proficiency and other challenges of acculturation to U.S. society. Written by frontline experts in the use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Assessing Hispanic Clients Using the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A discusses the utility of psychological tests based on U.S. norms in making clinical decisions for clients from different cultural backgrounds. The MMPI instruments are the most extensively researched and widely used personality instruments with Spanish-speaking clients. The authors provide readers a critical sociocultural context in the use of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A in the clinical assessment of Hispanic clients in the United States and abroad. Psychologists and other practitioners are offered a practical guide for clinical interpretation of test results, with advice on addressing biases, challenges to protocol validity, and other potential barriers to the culturally appropriate and ethical use and interpretation of the tests. Butcher, Cabiya, Lucio, and Garrido provide a comprehensive review of the research literature, past and contemporary, on the use of the MMPIs with Spanish-speaking populations in the United States and internationally. The authors describe the development and validation of Spanish-language versions of the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A, offering scenarios from Mexico, Cuba, and other Spanish-speaking countries. A set of appendixes includes T score conversion tables for the Mexican MMPI versions and a listing of Spanish language translations."--Jacket.

In this volume, over 50 eminent contributors from a diverse range of psychological disciplines address central issues in personality assessment. The authors were invited to select a key problem area in the field and to emphasize practical issues in their chapters. The result is a work of outstanding variety and depth of coverage with an immediately useful, hands-on focus. Topics include ethical considerations in clinical personality assessment, assessment of racial and ethnic minorities, and assessment of the elderly, among many other key topics. A practical, context-based approach is maintained throughout, and a useful Appendix providing an index of psychological assessment procedures concludes the book. It will be considered a definitive text for the field of assessment, appealing to both students and practicing clinical psychologists.