Therapeutic Assessment and Interpersonal Neurobiology : Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Longing to be Known

Therapeutic Assessment and Interpersonal Neurobiology shows how collaborative assessment can function as a potent therapeutic intervention—reducing shame, strengthening epistemic trust, and catalyzing meaningful change. Integrating research on affect regulation, memory reconsolidation, and intersubjectivity with richly detailed case examples, the book demonstrates how psychological tests can be used not only to understand clients but to help them experience themselves differently. The author highlights common traps that therapists fall into and provides strategies for them to improve their practical skills and enhance the course of treatment to transform clients’ lives. The book emphasizes the importance of client collaboration, secure attachment, mentalization, addressing shame, and epistemic trust during psychological interventions. Bridging psychological assessment and modern psychotherapy, this volume provides assessment professionals and trainees with a rigorous, humane, and clinically actionable framework for using tests as instruments of psychological healing. As a sequel to his influential book, In Our Clients’ Shoes: Theory and Techniques of Therapeutic Assessment, the author offers a renewed and transformative vision of psychological assessment grounded in contemporary neuroscience, attachment theory, and decades of clinical practice. This is an invaluable resource for psychologists, particularly those who use the MMPI-2, MMPI-3, Rorschach, AAP, and EMP.