Health and Psychology

I had to make a decision recently.  A company I worked for was intending to change what they were doing in relation to my work.  So the major part of what I had hoped to accomplish at my time at the company was going to disappear.  The company tells me that what they intend will be better because there will be more people involved in learning.  But the plan has nothing to do with what I want, hope or dream about.  So I left.

In the meantime, there are three other companies that want to help me do what I want.  I want to do nothing short of changing the world of psychology.  Right now in 2012, psychology graduate schools across the country are teaching testing and assessment.  They teach it in this regimented stereotypical fashion.  It ultimately answers some questions about how the person is doing in some area or facet of their life, or it compares them to a normative group.  At the end of the day, when all the results are in the person is often left with "Now what?"  I want to change that.

I teach testing in a wide variety of areas; I supervise testing in a wide variety of areas; I train psychologists to think differently about what testing is and what it can be.  So here's the big news flash...testing is about people.  Psychologists often present testing as if it's about the tests.  It's not.  It's about helping people know who they are so they can figure out what to do so they can get what they want out of life.  Testing is an appetizer.  Many people serve testing up as an entree. For them, it's about good test administration and interpretation.  For me it's a way to see into someone's world, to answer the questions they have, and to explain to them how to get what they want.

Psychological testing or neuropsychological testing then, isn't about test scores.  It's not about identifying a processing style or obtaining a diagnosis.  It's about identifying goals and methods to obtain goals.  It's putting together work-around strategies to help someone do what they want.  If the end goal is a diagnosis or a report to an agency that's fine.  But more often that's not the end goal.  The end goal is reaching what the person wants--a better relationship, to succeed in school or work, to feel more alive daily, those goals that are meaningful.

So I'm going to leave one of the places I've been working at to ultimately work for three others in the course of the next couple of years.  My goal is to make psychologial testing about people, not tests.  I'm going to be working with some amazing people who want to change the world of psychological testing.  It's very ambitious and quite inspirational.  I'm thrilled to be a part of it.