What is the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to understanding psychopathology?
What is the mportance of a multi-dimensional approach to understanding psychopathology?
Also, What are some problems with projective tests?
By multi-dimensional you refer to multdisciplinary, by any chance? If that’s so, I believe it would be important because you can have different views of any given psychopathology. For instance, if you take generalized anxiety disorder and try to focus only on psychoanalysis, that seems great. Psychoanalysis would tell you that the anxiety is unconscious and that it has grown out of control (sorry for the sketchy use of this theory, I’m not a psychoanalyst). However, psychoanalytic theories are hard to test empirically. Hence, you might benefit from, say, a behavioral approach, which is much more observable; say, you can theorize that the disorder is somewhat phobic, or that it has been conditionally learned and it has become generalized, etc. You now have two versions, and both can be equally right. If you are creative enough, you might find a way to blend both views into one, and explain your pathology with a bidimensional approach. This could increase your appraisal of the pathology, and make you analysis more encompassing.
This can be applied ad infinitum. You can start with two schools, test them, see if they can fit together, and build from there, perhaps adding a third. The challenge is that you need to know if using many schools at once will be reasonably justifiable, because it will increase not only the complexity of your thesis and analysis, but also of your research design (or your therapeutic approach).
Projective tests? Well, they are basically assuming that what the respondent says, sees or writes/draws (depending on the test itself) is a direct manifestation of inner thoughts, beliefs or emotions. This is an indirect way of measuring, at best. So far, I haven’t encountered a research article that gives evidence nor supports the validity of such tests. I don’t imply they’re useless, but you should use them with care.
January 27th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
By multi-dimensional you refer to multdisciplinary, by any chance? If that’s so, I believe it would be important because you can have different views of any given psychopathology. For instance, if you take generalized anxiety disorder and try to focus only on psychoanalysis, that seems great. Psychoanalysis would tell you that the anxiety is unconscious and that it has grown out of control (sorry for the sketchy use of this theory, I’m not a psychoanalyst). However, psychoanalytic theories are hard to test empirically. Hence, you might benefit from, say, a behavioral approach, which is much more observable; say, you can theorize that the disorder is somewhat phobic, or that it has been conditionally learned and it has become generalized, etc. You now have two versions, and both can be equally right. If you are creative enough, you might find a way to blend both views into one, and explain your pathology with a bidimensional approach. This could increase your appraisal of the pathology, and make you analysis more encompassing.
This can be applied ad infinitum. You can start with two schools, test them, see if they can fit together, and build from there, perhaps adding a third. The challenge is that you need to know if using many schools at once will be reasonably justifiable, because it will increase not only the complexity of your thesis and analysis, but also of your research design (or your therapeutic approach).
Projective tests? Well, they are basically assuming that what the respondent says, sees or writes/draws (depending on the test itself) is a direct manifestation of inner thoughts, beliefs or emotions. This is an indirect way of measuring, at best. So far, I haven’t encountered a research article that gives evidence nor supports the validity of such tests. I don’t imply they’re useless, but you should use them with care.
References :
Psychology student.