The Therapy Dyad: Yet Another Look at Diagnostic Assessment

Abstract

Psychological assessment has been attacked both from within and outisde of psychology. Current research and opinion suggests that usual assessment procedures provide only marginally useful information at best and often yield unreliable, invalid, and unwanted data. It is argued that a new approach should be treatment oriented. The model proposed emphasizes the evaluation of therapy dyads extrapolating from relevant social persuasion theory. This approach avoids the mistake of considering only patient variables in treatment.