Reclaiming the Value of Assessing Unconscious and Subjective Psychological Experience

Abstract

The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual provides a model of the individual that emphasizes the prominence of unconscious subjective experience in shaping personality and psychopathology. Yet, modern psychiatry and psychology have avoided reference to and assessment of such processes. In this article, I review evidence from the cognitive neuroscience literature that supports the relationship of unconscious subjective experience to personality and behavior. Suggestions are made for how these findings should affect clinical assessment practice and how research methodology could be employed to further evaluate and enhance current assessment practice.

Acknowledgments

I am appreciative of the feedback from Dr. Robert McGrath from an earlier version of a related manuscript and feedback from Dr. Robert Bornstein on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

In this case, unique responses were determined based on their use of a 217-member reference sample, whose responses were categorized as unique, frequent, or infrequent, although little information was provided in the paper as to the way in which these decisions were made and what the content was of the responses.

An idiographic use of psychological testing to understand the whole person is used in other domains of assessment, such as in neuropsychological testing (Milberg, Hebben, & Kaplan, 2009) and intellectual assessment (Handler, 1998).

It should be noted that Fowler et al. (2001) did not directly compare the S-CON with the BHS in the same sample.