Understanding Personality through Projective Testing - by Steven Tuber (Hardcover)

About the Book

Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing provides a concise, nuanced depiction of six core aspects of personality within a psychodynamic/developmental framework. It then portrays how each of these domains can be assessed with four projective methods: the Rorschach, ...

Book Synopsis

Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing provides a concise, nuanced depiction of six core aspects of personality within a psychodynamic/developmental framework. It then portrays how each of these domains can be assessed with four projective methods: the Rorschach, TAT, Sentence Completion and Animal Preference Tests. The strengths and heuristic value of each of the four methods are described individually and then integrated via case examples to provide a rich, comprehensive methodology for understanding personality functioning.

Review Quotes

In this, his third book, Steven Tuber again offers us a beautifully rendered teaching text that balances theory with the immediacy of his presence in the clinical moment. Tuber clearly loves his work--as a clinician and as a teacher--and this book illuminates projective testing with both a thoughtful, integrated mastery of his subject and an intimacy that testify to that love. From his rich and vivid portrayals of individual's psychologies as manifested in projective tests, Tuber draws the reader's attention to complexity and detail while never losing sight of the goal of testing--to explore with curiosity and compassion a person's internal world. This book holds promise to restore projective tests' center stage position in training and in our efforts to serve our patients optimally.

For years I have heard doctoral students rave about Steve Tuber's assessment class--now I know why. Steve Tuber's voice shines through in this wonderful book which offers a clear structure for evaluation that is as useful to experienced evaluators as beginning students. Tuber wears his considerable erudition lightly and the writing reflects his easy command of the material by its humor, concision, and "readability." A must for every tester, a book in the great tradition of Rappaport, Gill and Schafer, and Klopfer.

In the current climate of clinical psychology training in which depth approaches to assessment and treatment are being deemphasized or eliminated (e.g., American Psychological Association Division 12 Presidential Task Force, 1999) in favor of symptom-focused methods, Tuber's Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing is a welcome and refreshing antidote. Tuber's volume follows in the tradition of classics on psychoanalytic psychological assessment such as Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer (1968); Schafer (1954); Allison, Blatt, and Zimet (1968); and Lerner (1998). As important and relevant as those texts continue to be, Tuber communicates his ideas and methods in a manner that is more accessible to contemporary graduate students, pre- and postdoctoral trainees, and early career psychologists who may have had less immersion in psychoanalytic theory than their predecessors in past decades. An experienced clinician, teacher, and supervisor, Tuber strives to write as if the reader is 'sitting in my classroom, sharing the dialogue with me' (p. ix), and he is largely successful. ... Tuber has made a meaningful and accessible contribution to the psychological testing literature at a point in time when useful and sophisticated psychoanalytic theory-driven approaches are at risk of being lost (Lerner, 2007). Tuber's conversational style in communicating complex theoretical and technical ideas exudes passion for psychoanalytic theory and assessment, a generative spirit, and empathy for his patients, students, and readers. Tuber's book offers hope that future generations of psychologists will appreciate the immense value in this way of thinking and working. Understanding Personality Through Projective Testing would be a highly worthwhile addition to reading lists in assessment seminars for advanced graduate students, interns, and postdoctoral fellows. The value of this book will be further enhanced by classroom time devoted to the thinking along with Tuber in his process of drawing inferences from the data in his detailed case illustrations.


Projective methods, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, are valued by some and questioned by others for their use in allowing patients to project on ambiguous stimuli aspects of the self they either cannot or do not wish to reveal to others. Tuber (CUNY City College) describes the value of four projective techniques for uncovering patients' psychodynamic issues: the Rorschach test ("Tell me what this ink blot could be"), the sentence completion task (fill in the blank, e.g., "I miss so much _____"), the animal preference task ("What animal would you like to be?"), and the Thematic Apperception Test ("Tell me a story about this card"). Several detailed case examples are given, including a complete analysis of "Nicholas." The author presumes a fair amount of familiarity with the projective techniques mentioned, including the administration and scoring protocols. Written in a semi-conversational manner (complete with grammatical errors), the study is richly interesting, thought provoking, and detailed in procedural and interpretive recommendations. Overall, Tuber models a thoughtful reverence for patients and for the process of identifying and working through their emergent problems. Summing Up: Recommended.

Steven Tuber provides a superb, original, creative, highly readable, and pragmatic work that offers a new look at the Rorschach Inkblot Test, the TAT, and the Sentence Completion Test as methods to evaluate personality functioning. He integrates developmental, dynamic, and relational concepts to construct an understanding of the whole person and to form a scaffold that provides the reader with new steps to follow when using these projective tests to assess a person's personality functioning, the meanings he/she assigns to experiences, and the developmental roots of these meanings. These steps, accompanied by clear, clinical illustrations, are very useful not only for professionals who are entering the field of projective testing in personality assessment, but also for experienced clinicians who are interested in expanding their understanding of, and effectiveness with, the use of projective testing in clinical practice.

Tuber's text is not merely for the graduate student, but also for the practicing clinician. His text is written with heart and soul, examining not just what the patient sees, but also how the patient sees it. Tuber beautifully illustrates difficult concepts through case examples, his own clinical experience, and even through the experiences of his students. He has artfully integrated, and illustrated, the theories of well known experts.

About the Author

Steven Tuber, PhD, ABPP, is professor of psychology and director of clinical training in the doctoral program in clinical psychology of the City University of New York at City College. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Attachment, Play & Authenticity: A Winnicott Primer, and Starting Treatment with Children and Adolescents: A Process-Oriented Guide for Therapists (with Jane Caflisch) as well as over one hundred papers on the interplay between assessment and treatment in children, adolescents, and adults.Understanding Personality through Projective Testing was also selected as a finalist for the Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship (2012).