Back to Table of Contents
on and through the medium of psychological testing; the contributions of Bion; and a theoretical elaboration of experiential factors in self-and-object relations (below).
III. Ce. Ego Psychology and Psychological Testing In Israel, one of the major influences as well as manifestations of Ego Psychology was through the development and practice of clinical psychological tests. The contributions of David Rapaport and his co-workers represent the seminal influence in this area (Rapaport, Gill & Schafer, 1945). This pioneering effort had many subsequent developments in both clinical practice and psychological research. The approach taken in Rapaport, Gill and Schafer’s’ work follows closely the ego functions first described by Freud (1911) and elaborated by numerous subsequent authors (e.g., Bellak et al, 1973; Bellak, 1989; Beres, 1956, 1971; Rapaport, 1958). The testing manual of Rapaport, Gill and Schafer that describes, analyses and codifies mental functioning, became the cornerstone of clinical psychological testing for diagnostic purposes, and served for decades as the basis for the formation of clinical psychologists and their interrelatedness and participation in psychiatric case management. In effect, these tests and the reports written on their basis mainly represent the analysis and diagnostic integration of the subject’s ego functions. They focus on such ego functions as attention and concentration, social and adaptive judgment, levels of thinking from concrete to abstract, affect management, self-image and identity, etc., and the observed fluctuations, gaps and impediments in these functions. The final integrative picture serves to pinpoint the diagnostic category that best describes the patient in terms of his or her ego functions, as well as certain depth psychological dynamics revealed by the tests. For quite some time, these diagnostic tests were regarded as the equivalent of a psychological x-ray picture of the patient, corroborating, complementing and sometimes challenging or contradicting the clinical psychiatric diagnosis. Furthermore, since the tests were the exclusive domain of the psychologist, they helped to define and establish the emergent professional identity of the clinical psychologist and to enrich his understanding of the depth and complexity of the human mind, personality and functioning. As a professional discipline, clinical psychology was able to establish and initially define itself by means of this special capacity. This changed gradually as clinical psychologists gained professional independence and autonomy and increasingly engaged directly in full- fledged psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Perhaps the current relative abandonment and downgrading of diagnostic personality testing as a sole defining aspect of the professional identity and activity of clinical psychologists in Israel, almost totally usurped by their psychotherapeutic activity, parallels the waning trajectory of Ego Psychology in Israel.
III. Cf. Bion and Ego Psychology It is customary to think of Wilfred R. Bion as (at least initially) a Kleinian analyst, although he himself rejected such attributions. It is far less usual to think of Bion as Freudian.
290
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online