Uses and Misuses of Ted Kaczynski's MMPI

ABSTRACT

Although case studies can be a helpful didactic aid when teaching personality assessment and illustrating use of a test, they can, of course, not be used as “evidence” that a test “works” or does not work. This article, however, reviews and discusses the far more problematic uses instantiated in a case study of Ted Kaczynski's Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). A series of errors of omission and commission are identified in Butcher, Hass, Greene, and Nelson's (2015) effort to criticize the MMPI–2–RF. These include not disclosing that Butcher's interpretive Minnesota Report for Forensic Settings indicates that the protocol is invalid, not including most of the MMPI–2 and MMPI–2–RF scores that contradict the authors' assertions, and mischaracterizing the MMPI–2–RF findings. Proper use of a case study is then illustrated by a discussion of diagnostic considerations indicated by the MMPI–2–RF findings.

This article is referred to by:

Using the MMPI-2 in Forensic Assessment: Response to Criticism About a Case Study

Disclosure

Yossef Ben-Porath is a paid consultant to the MMPI Publisher, the University of Minnesota, and Distributor, Pearson. As coauthor of the MMPI–2–RF he receives royalties on sales of the test.

Notes

¹ Sellbom and Wygant (2018) provide a detailed response to Butcher, Hass, Greene, and Nelson's (2015) criticisms of the MMPI–2–RF and its use in forensic assessments.

² Item content was removed from Appendix B to protect test security.

³ Butcher et al. (2015) incorrectly used the term mass murder, which is typically used to refer to the killing of multiple individuals in a single instance. The proper term would be serial killer, which is used to denote multiple single killings over a period of time (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2005).

⁴ A more detailed discussion of this finding follows later in this article.