Question

compare and contrast a specific psychodynamic assessment with an assessment based on another personality theory. Focus on reliability and validity of the assessment.​

Answer 1

Personality is said to be the sum total of all the behavior, thoughts and actions of individuals. It is said to be a dynamic organization within the individual that determines his characteristic thoughts and behaviors. Therefore, personality can be said to influence the action patterns of the individuals. There have been many approaches to study personality, like psychodynamic and humanistic or existentialist.

Psychodynamic approach to study personality basically focuses on the innate instincts of an individual as opposed to the trait or type approach of personality which focuses on the overall typical traits of an individual.

Psychodynamic approaches are largely based on Freud’s and Neo-Freudians theory of personality. Their approach was basically towards the influence of instincts and needs on the behavioral patterns of individuals that unconsciously influence it. Projections, displacements, repression, regression etc. are known as the various defense mechanisms that an individual uses to deal with the conflicting environmental stimuli and his /her psyche.

Personality assessment, therefore, based on psychodynamic approach focuses on the identification of these unconscious desires and thoughts. The various assessments like, Word Association, Dream Analysis, Thematic Apperception Test, Rorschach Inkblot Test are all based on assessing the unconscious instincts, needs and desires of an individual. The data for personality assessment is in the form of stories made up by individual or the responses on the various unstructured ambiguous stimuli presented to the individual. The reliability and validity is thus not high because the data cannot be tested for accuracy or objectivity. Moreover, the interpretation of such data is highly subjective and lacks inter-rater reliability and validity. For example, one day one may interpret the Rorschach cards in some manner and on the other day, with another mind set and experiences, the same card may be interpreted in another way.

As opposed to psychodynamic approach, other personality theorists have given tools for personality assessment which are more objective, reliable and valid in nature, for example, Cattel’s 16 PF, Eyesenck’s Personality Questionnaire, MMPI. These are objective test in the form of an inventory and questionnaire which are objectively assessed on the basis of rating scale. There are no issues of non-reliable and subjective data and are high on inter-rater reliability. These test are more standardized as the set of instructions, procedure for conduction and interpretation of scores is objective and follows the same pattern for each individual.

Though psychodynamic tools are criticized for being too subjective yet they reveal a lot about one’s personality and are still being used for assessing personality of an individual.