1st Edition
Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Psychological Assessment
Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Psychological Assessment brings together two interrelated realms: psychological assessment with gender and sexuality. This handbook aids in expanding the psychological assessors’ knowledge and skill when considering how gender and sexuality shapes the client’s and the assessor’s experiences. Throughout the six sections, gender and sexuality are discussed in their relation to different psychological methods of assessment; various psychological disorders; special considerations for children, adolescents, and older adults; important training and ethical considerations; as well as several in-depth case discussions.
Biography
Virginia M. Brabender, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at Widener University. She is also on the editorial board of the Journal for Personality Assessment.
Joni L. Mihura, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toledo. She currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Personality Assessment and Rorschachiana.
Brabender and Mihura and the esteemed clinician-authors they have assembled have broken crucial, new ground in the literature on psychological assessment. This timely volume strikes an optimal blend of scholarly review of research and theory with rich case illustrations to guide assessors in the careful consideration of nuances of gender and sexuality in understanding the people they evaluate. This book epitomizes a model of reflective, empathic, rigorous, ethical, and highly competent assessment for the 21st century.—Anthony D. Bram, PhD, ABAP, Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Author of Psychological Testing that Matters: Creating a Road Map for Effective Treatment.
Despite psychology being an overwhelmingly female profession, the specialty of psychological assessment is dominated by men. Perhaps as a consequence, too little attention has been paid to the role of gender in the assessment process. This volume, edited by two of the leading psychological assessment researchers and teachers in the world goes a long way toward redressing that balance. They have assembled an impressive group of senior contributors who thoughtfully address such issues as the role of gender in interpreting various instruments, the intersection of gender and psychopathology, and gender and sexuality in the assessor-client relationship. This is a vitally important book.—Bruce L. Smith, PhD, ABAP, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.This impressive handbook is an invaluable resource on the often overlooked yet essential aspects of gender and sexuality in psychological assessment. It serves practitioners extremely well with its wealth of case examples, which include many different types of psychopathology from different areas of assessment practice, such as child/adolescent and forensic. Each chapter ends with a set of practical key points and an annotated bibliography. On a firm empirical grounding, this handbook also makes an outstanding scholarly contribution, by providing comprehensive reviews of the current literature and directions for future research endeavors.—Corine de Ruiter, PhD, Professor of Forensic Psychology, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.
Brabender and Mihura's Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Psychological Assessment provides a comprehensive overview of how issues of gender and sexuality can impact both the assessor and the client during psychological assessmennt. The chapters elegantly weave together reviews of the current literature when it exists--nothing where more research is warranted--along with illustrative case studies and vignettes, in order to provide suggestions for how to best interweave what is known into actual practice. This text does an excellent job of balancing the discussion of tools to reduce gender bias with an understanding of how gender- and sex-specific information can ebtter inform assessment... [Each] chapter is able to stand alone and to provide unique insight into how gender and sexuality influence assessment. The chapters, while informative and providing unbiased review of the literature, are also quite engaging, particularly the chapters that provide personal examples of the authors, which bolster the academic material presented. This text does not just explain epidemiological information about sex and gender differences in the assessment arena but also convincingly highlights reasons why it is important to further explroe gender and exuality in psychological assessment. - Amber Dunbar, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine
The present book elucidates the influence of sex, gender, and gender identity on various aspects of the assessment process. The book is valuable and informative for students and early career clinicians working with psychological assessment, but perhaps even more so for midcareer and senior assessors who did not get sufficient training and supervision related to sex and gender in their education. The book is also informative for the reader interested in research. The necessity of a multimethod approach that also considers all facets of identity and their consequences for patients runs as the main thread through all the contributions in the book and is well elucidated in the case illustrations. The reader wanting to learn more about the pros and cons of different methods of assessment of socially charged aspects of gender and sex will find rich material in this book.- Marianne Nygren, Rorschachiana
