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Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment Steven K. Huprich
a
a
Department of Psychology, Wichita State University Published online: 26 Aug 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Steven K. Huprich (2014) Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment, Journal of Personality Assessment, 96:6, 579-580, DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2014.949344 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2014.949344
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(6), 579–580, 2014 Copyright Ó Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0022-3891 print / 1532-7752 online DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2014.949344
EDITORIAL
Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment STEVEN K. HUPRICH
Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 02:47 14 March 2015
Department of Psychology, Wichita State University
As the last issue of the Journal of Personality Assessment is reaching readers this year, it does so at a time when the field has observed the deaths of two highly influential and legendary personality psychologists—Dr. Sidney J. Blatt and Dr. Theodore Millon. Sidney Blatt (October 15, 1928–May 11, 2014) was regarded as one of the leading psychoanalytic researchers of the 20th and 21st centuries. His interests in personality pathology, development and psychopathology, and personality assessment became widely regarded during his career, which spanned more than 40 years. The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (Blatt, 1974), Concept of Object Scale (Blatt, Brenneis, Schimek, & Glick, 1976), Separation–Individuation Scale (Coonerty, Diamond, Kaslow, & Blatt, 1987; Diamond, Blatt, Stayner, & Kaslow, 1991), and Object Relations Inventory (Blatt, Bers, & Schaffer, 1993; Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, & Wein, 1992)—among others—have been widely studied and researched. Dr. Blatt was the President of the Society for Personality Assessment between 1984 and 1986. He also provided some notable insights into what types of personalities best benefit from psychoanalysis compared to insight-oriented psychotherapy (Blatt, 1992), and frequently discussed the interface of personality assessment, personality dynamics, and pathology with psychotherapy treatment outcomes. His book, Polarities of Experience (Blatt, 2008), provided an overview of self-definitional and relational lines of personality development, including a description of how such lines or trajectories develop, what kinds of problems might arise, how personality styles develop from such trajectories, and how psychotherapy works best for each of the trajectories. In his review of Blatt’s book and its companion, Wallerstein (2009) wrote: These two volumes present a most impressive and fitting capstone to Sidney Blatt’s very productive lifetime of almost unmatched threefold integration of (a) clinical experience, beginning with his astute observation of the strikingly different thematic preoccupations of two otherwise very similarly depressed patients whom Blatt was analyzing during his psychoanalytic training; (b) the theoretic conceptualization stemming from these clinical observations, which became the basic fabric of his lifetime major addition to our psychological explanatory universe; and (c) the painstaking systematic empirical data gathering,
together with the creation of necessary—and truly appropriate— measures and instruments that, in ensemble, provide such strong data-based support for Blatt’s clinically inspired theoretic harvesting. (p. 139)
In many ways, Blatt embodied the very best of what it meant to be a scientist-practitioner and profoundly touched the lives of many students and trainees for generations. Theodore Millon (August 18, 1928–January 29, 2014) shaped the field of personality and assessment in permanent and indelible ways. Early in his career, Dr. Millon (1969, 1977) described a theory of personality and a corresponding assessment tool that forever would shape the way in which personality pathology would be understood. His biosocial, evolutionary theory of personality became widely recognized as theoretically integrative and novel, expanding into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. [DSM–III]; American Psychiatric Association, 1980] and later editions of the DSM system (Millon, 1981, 2011; Millon & Davis, 1996). Because of his love of the study of personality, he cofounded and was the first coeditor of the Journal of Personality Disorders. He also was instrumental in the development of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. Beyond his interests in personology, Dr. Millon developed assessment scales for adolescent personality pathology (Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2006), normative personality (Millon, Millon, & Weiss, 2003), behavioral medicine (Millon, Antoni, Millon, Minor, & Grossman, 2006), and college counseling (Millon, Strack, Millon, & Grossman, 2006). In 2001, the Society for Personality Assessment awarded Dr. Millon the Bruno Klopfer Award for outstanding lifetime achievement in personality assessment research. His talk, entitled, “Assessment Is Not Enough: The SPA Should Participate in Constructing a Comprehensive Clinical Science of Personality” (Millon, 2002), encouraged assessment psychologists to embrace a bold and proactive stance toward the creation of an empirically grounded, comprehensive, and clinically meaningful diagnostic system of personality pathology. On learning of Dr. Millon’s death, Livesley and Krueger (2014) wrote, “At a time when the field was almost totally preoccupied with data collection, Ted argued emphatically that data take on a meaning and significance only when viewed in a theoretical context—an insight the field has yet to
579
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incorporate fully” (p. ii). In fact, in many of his writings, Dr. Millon argued that theory should guide research: “We believe that the resolution of many of the current dilemmas in personality diagnosis will come with a more sophisticated, theorydriven approach, one that gets beyond the simplicities of traditional categorical and dimensional models” (Strack & Millon, 2007, p. 66). Dr. Millon envisioned a time when personality trait dimensions and categories could be meaningfully integrated into a more comprehensive framework of understanding both normative and pathological personality. Indeed, moving toward the future, it is possible that Dr. Millon’s conceptualization will be borne out (e.g., Huprich, in press). Because these losses to the profession are so poignant, and because both Dr. Blatt and Dr. Millon were so loved and appreciated, the Journal of Personality Assessment will be publishing two special series (both tentatively scheduled for 2015) on the contributions of each man’s work to advancing the field of personality assessment. Dr. John Auerbach has very kindly agreed to coordinate the series that will honor Dr. Blatt, and Dr. Stephen Strack will be overseeing the production of the series for Dr. Millon. Both have begun to solicit papers for these series, which have much promise to be great tributes to Drs. Blatt and Millon. I will be excited to publish both series to honor two men who were so deeply and profoundly appreciated.
REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (1980). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Blatt, S. J. (1974). Levels of object representation in anaclitic and introjective depression. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 40, 11–39. Blatt, S. J. (1992). The differential effect of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with anaclitic and introjective patients: The Menninger Psychotherapy Research Project revisited. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 40, 691–724. Blatt, S. J. (2008). Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Blatt, S. J., Bers, S. A., & Schaffer, C. E. (1993). The assessment of selfdescriptions. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Blatt, S. J., Brenneis, C. B., Schimek, J. G., & Glick, M. (1976). Normal development and psychopathological impairment of the concept of the object on the Rorschach. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 364–373.
Blatt, S. J., Chevron, E. S., Quinlan, D. M., Schaffer, C. E., & Wein, S. (1992). The assessment of qualitative and structural dimensions of object representations. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Coonerty, S., Diamond, D., Kaslow, N., & Blatt, S. J. (1987). The Rorschach Separation–Individuation Scale. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Diamond, D., Blatt, S. J., Stayner, D., & Kaslow, N. (1991). Self–other differentiation of object representations. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Huprich, S. K. (in press). Personality disorders: Toward theoretical and empirical integration in diagnosis and assessment. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Livesley, W. J., & Krueger, R. F. (2014). Editorial: In memory of Theodore Millon. Journal of Personality Disorders, 28, i–ii. Millon, T. (1969). Modern psychopathology: A biosocial approach to maladaptive learning and functioning. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders. Millon, T. (1977). Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory manual. Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems. Millon, T. (1981). Disorders of personality: DSM–II, Axis II. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T. (2002). Assessment is not enough: The SPA should participate in constructing a comprehensive clinical science of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 78, 209–218. Millon, T. (2011). Disorders of personality: Introducing a DSM/ICD spectrum from normal to abnormal. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T., Antoni, M., Millon, C., Minor, S. E., & Grossman, S. D. (2006). MBMD (Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic) manual (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Millon, T., & Davis, R. D. (1996). Disorders of personality: Toward DSM–IV and beyond. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T., Millon, C., Davis, R. D., & Grossman, S. D. (2006). MACI (Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory) manual (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Millon, T., Millon, C., & Weiss, L. (2003). Millon Index of Personality Styles Revised (MIPS–R) manual. Minneapolis, MN: Pearson. Millon, T., Strack, S. N., Millon, C., & Grossman, S. (2006). MCCI (Millon College Counseling Inventory) manual. Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Strack, S., & Millon, T. (2007). Contributions to the dimensional assessment of personality disorders using Millon’s model and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–III (MCMI–III). Journal of Personality Assessment, 89, 56–69. Wallerstein, R. S. (2009). Review of Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process and Relatedness, self-definition and mental representation: Essays in honor of Sidney J. Blatt. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 46, 139–144.
Journal of Personality Assessment Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hjpa20
Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment Steven K. Huprich
a
a
Department of Psychology, Wichita State University Published online: 26 Aug 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Steven K. Huprich (2014) Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment, Journal of Personality Assessment, 96:6, 579-580, DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2014.949344 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2014.949344
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(6), 579–580, 2014 Copyright Ó Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0022-3891 print / 1532-7752 online DOI: 10.1080/00223891.2014.949344
EDITORIAL
Honoring Two Leaders in the Field of Personality Assessment STEVEN K. HUPRICH
Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 02:47 14 March 2015
Department of Psychology, Wichita State University
As the last issue of the Journal of Personality Assessment is reaching readers this year, it does so at a time when the field has observed the deaths of two highly influential and legendary personality psychologists—Dr. Sidney J. Blatt and Dr. Theodore Millon. Sidney Blatt (October 15, 1928–May 11, 2014) was regarded as one of the leading psychoanalytic researchers of the 20th and 21st centuries. His interests in personality pathology, development and psychopathology, and personality assessment became widely regarded during his career, which spanned more than 40 years. The Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (Blatt, 1974), Concept of Object Scale (Blatt, Brenneis, Schimek, & Glick, 1976), Separation–Individuation Scale (Coonerty, Diamond, Kaslow, & Blatt, 1987; Diamond, Blatt, Stayner, & Kaslow, 1991), and Object Relations Inventory (Blatt, Bers, & Schaffer, 1993; Blatt, Chevron, Quinlan, Schaffer, & Wein, 1992)—among others—have been widely studied and researched. Dr. Blatt was the President of the Society for Personality Assessment between 1984 and 1986. He also provided some notable insights into what types of personalities best benefit from psychoanalysis compared to insight-oriented psychotherapy (Blatt, 1992), and frequently discussed the interface of personality assessment, personality dynamics, and pathology with psychotherapy treatment outcomes. His book, Polarities of Experience (Blatt, 2008), provided an overview of self-definitional and relational lines of personality development, including a description of how such lines or trajectories develop, what kinds of problems might arise, how personality styles develop from such trajectories, and how psychotherapy works best for each of the trajectories. In his review of Blatt’s book and its companion, Wallerstein (2009) wrote: These two volumes present a most impressive and fitting capstone to Sidney Blatt’s very productive lifetime of almost unmatched threefold integration of (a) clinical experience, beginning with his astute observation of the strikingly different thematic preoccupations of two otherwise very similarly depressed patients whom Blatt was analyzing during his psychoanalytic training; (b) the theoretic conceptualization stemming from these clinical observations, which became the basic fabric of his lifetime major addition to our psychological explanatory universe; and (c) the painstaking systematic empirical data gathering,
together with the creation of necessary—and truly appropriate— measures and instruments that, in ensemble, provide such strong data-based support for Blatt’s clinically inspired theoretic harvesting. (p. 139)
In many ways, Blatt embodied the very best of what it meant to be a scientist-practitioner and profoundly touched the lives of many students and trainees for generations. Theodore Millon (August 18, 1928–January 29, 2014) shaped the field of personality and assessment in permanent and indelible ways. Early in his career, Dr. Millon (1969, 1977) described a theory of personality and a corresponding assessment tool that forever would shape the way in which personality pathology would be understood. His biosocial, evolutionary theory of personality became widely recognized as theoretically integrative and novel, expanding into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. [DSM–III]; American Psychiatric Association, 1980] and later editions of the DSM system (Millon, 1981, 2011; Millon & Davis, 1996). Because of his love of the study of personality, he cofounded and was the first coeditor of the Journal of Personality Disorders. He also was instrumental in the development of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. Beyond his interests in personology, Dr. Millon developed assessment scales for adolescent personality pathology (Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2006), normative personality (Millon, Millon, & Weiss, 2003), behavioral medicine (Millon, Antoni, Millon, Minor, & Grossman, 2006), and college counseling (Millon, Strack, Millon, & Grossman, 2006). In 2001, the Society for Personality Assessment awarded Dr. Millon the Bruno Klopfer Award for outstanding lifetime achievement in personality assessment research. His talk, entitled, “Assessment Is Not Enough: The SPA Should Participate in Constructing a Comprehensive Clinical Science of Personality” (Millon, 2002), encouraged assessment psychologists to embrace a bold and proactive stance toward the creation of an empirically grounded, comprehensive, and clinically meaningful diagnostic system of personality pathology. On learning of Dr. Millon’s death, Livesley and Krueger (2014) wrote, “At a time when the field was almost totally preoccupied with data collection, Ted argued emphatically that data take on a meaning and significance only when viewed in a theoretical context—an insight the field has yet to
579
Downloaded by [The Aga Khan University] at 02:47 14 March 2015
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EDITORIAL
incorporate fully” (p. ii). In fact, in many of his writings, Dr. Millon argued that theory should guide research: “We believe that the resolution of many of the current dilemmas in personality diagnosis will come with a more sophisticated, theorydriven approach, one that gets beyond the simplicities of traditional categorical and dimensional models” (Strack & Millon, 2007, p. 66). Dr. Millon envisioned a time when personality trait dimensions and categories could be meaningfully integrated into a more comprehensive framework of understanding both normative and pathological personality. Indeed, moving toward the future, it is possible that Dr. Millon’s conceptualization will be borne out (e.g., Huprich, in press). Because these losses to the profession are so poignant, and because both Dr. Blatt and Dr. Millon were so loved and appreciated, the Journal of Personality Assessment will be publishing two special series (both tentatively scheduled for 2015) on the contributions of each man’s work to advancing the field of personality assessment. Dr. John Auerbach has very kindly agreed to coordinate the series that will honor Dr. Blatt, and Dr. Stephen Strack will be overseeing the production of the series for Dr. Millon. Both have begun to solicit papers for these series, which have much promise to be great tributes to Drs. Blatt and Millon. I will be excited to publish both series to honor two men who were so deeply and profoundly appreciated.
REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (1980). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Blatt, S. J. (1974). Levels of object representation in anaclitic and introjective depression. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 40, 11–39. Blatt, S. J. (1992). The differential effect of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with anaclitic and introjective patients: The Menninger Psychotherapy Research Project revisited. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 40, 691–724. Blatt, S. J. (2008). Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Blatt, S. J., Bers, S. A., & Schaffer, C. E. (1993). The assessment of selfdescriptions. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Blatt, S. J., Brenneis, C. B., Schimek, J. G., & Glick, M. (1976). Normal development and psychopathological impairment of the concept of the object on the Rorschach. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 85, 364–373.
Blatt, S. J., Chevron, E. S., Quinlan, D. M., Schaffer, C. E., & Wein, S. (1992). The assessment of qualitative and structural dimensions of object representations. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Coonerty, S., Diamond, D., Kaslow, N., & Blatt, S. J. (1987). The Rorschach Separation–Individuation Scale. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Diamond, D., Blatt, S. J., Stayner, D., & Kaslow, N. (1991). Self–other differentiation of object representations. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Huprich, S. K. (in press). Personality disorders: Toward theoretical and empirical integration in diagnosis and assessment. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Livesley, W. J., & Krueger, R. F. (2014). Editorial: In memory of Theodore Millon. Journal of Personality Disorders, 28, i–ii. Millon, T. (1969). Modern psychopathology: A biosocial approach to maladaptive learning and functioning. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders. Millon, T. (1977). Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory manual. Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems. Millon, T. (1981). Disorders of personality: DSM–II, Axis II. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T. (2002). Assessment is not enough: The SPA should participate in constructing a comprehensive clinical science of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 78, 209–218. Millon, T. (2011). Disorders of personality: Introducing a DSM/ICD spectrum from normal to abnormal. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T., Antoni, M., Millon, C., Minor, S. E., & Grossman, S. D. (2006). MBMD (Millon Behavioral Medicine Diagnostic) manual (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Millon, T., & Davis, R. D. (1996). Disorders of personality: Toward DSM–IV and beyond. New York, NY: Wiley. Millon, T., Millon, C., Davis, R. D., & Grossman, S. D. (2006). MACI (Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory) manual (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Millon, T., Millon, C., & Weiss, L. (2003). Millon Index of Personality Styles Revised (MIPS–R) manual. Minneapolis, MN: Pearson. Millon, T., Strack, S. N., Millon, C., & Grossman, S. (2006). MCCI (Millon College Counseling Inventory) manual. Minneapolis, MN: NCS Pearson. Strack, S., & Millon, T. (2007). Contributions to the dimensional assessment of personality disorders using Millon’s model and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–III (MCMI–III). Journal of Personality Assessment, 89, 56–69. Wallerstein, R. S. (2009). Review of Polarities of experience: Relatedness and self-definition in personality development, psychopathology, and the therapeutic process and Relatedness, self-definition and mental representation: Essays in honor of Sidney J. Blatt. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 46, 139–144.
