Rorschach Assessment of Senior Adults

This guide is a much-needed reference for clinicians on how to use the Rorschach Inkblot Test with senior adults, an essential tool for assessing personality functioning to better identify psychological interventions. The book integrates historical developments, current research, conceptual considerations, and therapeutic and diagnostic applications.

Chapters review basic guidelines for the understanding and interpretation of Rorschach variables, including protocol validity; interpretation of structural variables, thematic imagery, and cross-cultural normative data; sequence analysis; and more. The authors then provide 10 case illustrations of how the Rorschach indices of cognitive functioning, emotional experience, interpersonal relatedness, and self-perception can facilitate differential diagnosis and treatment planning in clinical work with older people. These case illustrations are rooted in previously non-existent Rorschach reference data based on an international sample of more than 250 senior adults and a second sample of more than 200 patients with Alzheimer''s disease.

Clinicians will come away with a solid empirical basis for distinguishing between normal-range personality functioning and manifestations of psychological disorder in the elderly and for providing beneficial interventions to senior adult patients.

Irving B. Weiner, PhD, ABPP, is a retired professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at the University of South Florida. He is a past president of APA Division 12 (Clinical Psychology), APA Division 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods), the Society for Personality Assessment, and the International Rorschach Society. His published books include Psychodiagnosis in Schizophrenia (1966), Principles of Rorschach Assessment (2nd ed., 2003), Principles of Psychotherapy (3rd ed., 2009), the Handbook of Personality Assessment (2nd ed., 2017), and, with Shira Tibon-Czopp, Rorschach Assessment of Adolescents (2016).

Liat Appel, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who is currently involved in an international research project on senior adults at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr. Appel lectures in various clinical programs in Israel and practices clinical psychology in Tel- Aviv. She is a coauthor of the Rorschach Reality-Fantasy Scale (RFS-2, 2016). Her recent publications include an article on adolescents with psychosomatic disorders in Rorschachiana (2011); a coauthored article on national trauma in Psychology (2011); and a coauthored article on Shedler-Westen assessment in Psychoanalytic Psychology (2012). She was the 2016 recipient of the Society for Personality Assessment Exner Scholar award.

Shira Tibon-Czopp, PhD, ABAP, is a clinical psychologist and visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she co-conducts an international project on personality and attitudes in senior adults. She has been lecturing in various clinical programs in Israel and has worked in inpatient and outpatient public clinics. Some of her recent publications include an essay on the Rorschach Inkblot Method in the Encyclopedia of Adolescence (2012); a coauthored book with Irving B. Weiner entitled Rorschach Assessment of Adolescents (2016); and coauthored articles on the Rorschach Reality-Fantasy Scale and Rorschach psychometric validity in the Journal of Personality Assessment (2016).