Overview of Therapeutic Assessment - Therapeutic Assessment Institute

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The Board of the Therapeutic Assessment Institute invites all professionals and graduate students to become active members of our vital, creative community of people interested in Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment. Read about membership benefits and join by clicking here.

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General donations to the TAI support costs of trainings, scholarships for students and new professionals to be trained in TA, and the development of training materials. All donations are tax deductible, as the TAI is recognized as a 501c3 organization by the US Internal Revenue Service. To make targeted donations for a specific project or purpose, please contact Dale Rudin.

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Upcoming Events

January

A Brief and Practical Introduction to Therapeutic Assessment

This 3-hour workshop is designed for psychologists and psychologists in training who have little exposure to the Therapeutic Assessment (TA) model but are interested in learning about it and how TA elements can be implemented in an assessment process. Therapeutic Assessment (TA) was developed by Stephen Finn, PhD, and his colleagues,...

January

Using the Consensus Rorschach in Ultra-brief Therapeutic Assessment with Couples

In this webinar, the three presenters will describe their experiences with an ultra-brief version of Therapeutic Assessment with Couples (Finn, 2015) including how the Consensus Rorschach is used as a potent Assessment Intervention Session (AIS) in the second meeting with the partners. We will describe the rationale and procedures of Ultra-brief Therapeutic...

How does Therapeutic Assessment produce therapeutic change?

Finn and Tonsager (1997) theorized that Therapeutic Assessment helps clients by 1) confirming certain views they have of themselves, 2) giving them new information about themselves and a greater sense of self-efficacy, and 3) helping clients feel understood and accepted. Finn (2008) emphasized recent evidence that all humans have a basic need to be seen, understood, and accepted, and hypothesized that Therapeutic Assessment is healing because it meets these needs. Finn (2007) posited that Therapeutic Assessment helps clients develop more coherent, accurate, compassionate, and useful “stories” about themselves and the world, and that these new ways of “viewing” help clients explore new ways of “doing.” Similarly, Tharinger, Finn, Hersh, Wilkinson, Christopher, and Tran (2008) noted that many parents come for assessments with incomplete or inaccurate understandings of their children. Clinicians can use Therapeutic Assessment, and especially insights from psychological tests, to help parents develop more empathy and understanding of their children. Ongoing research is testing these and other hypotheses about how and why Therapeutic Assessment produces positive changes in clients.