Ok, so is this manual scoring of the MMPI like a Psychologist initiation ritual? What a miserable way to spend three hours of my life! One hour to administer the test, three hours to score it and at least another hour to interpret. Lessee, at an optomistic $120/hour, billed only for the hour the client actually sat his or her ass in the chair, that gives me... $24/hour. Ok well it beats working for FREE like I am now, but somehow I don't think this will happen again. $67 for computer scoring (if we log through our prof's account) so $120-$67= $53. Better, but methinks I'd better find wealthy clientelle if I ever intend to pay off my loans. Sigh.
What DO most psychometricians charge for this test?
The interp this week will be great fun, since the subject was moi. Just flat impossible to see the forest for the trees today though. Ungh.
Professor Loop was awesome today, BTW. He rocks in a clincal setting!
The whole univerasal oneness thing didn't make much of an appearance at all, except he asked me to talk a little about mirror neurons b/c he'd heard me talking to a classmate in the hallway about them. From my explanation he went on to declare that just thinking thoughts about a person halfway across the country could have a resonant/mirroring effect. Um... ok. The studies thus far show that the primary effect drops off dramatically when the participants are more than 6 feet apart...
Anyway, one of my classamates gave a kick ass presentation and then did an equally outstanding role play and the student exchange was fantastic. Dr. Loop made great comments and reinstated my respect for him. I guess alternative world views might be allowed after all. =p
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Saturday, April 07, 2007
And They're Off!
Just three papers, a presentation and the MMPI to do this week, along with as much reading as I did in my entire masters program. Yikes! I was warned this term would be 'heavy duty' and that it will get heavier next year. Um... how? Starting practicum is certainly part of the heavy, no question about that.
So I took the MMPI this morning, as we have agreed that all us students will take it ourselves and then the prof will go over it with us individually, since it's a little dicier to do this one on friends and family. Great fun; can't wait to see my results. Hoping my Psychopathic Deviance score is nice and low... I lied my ass off of course, and pretended to be a caring, sensitive person. LOL! JK. That test just screams to be updated, you know? What the hell is the point of the masculinity/famininity scale anyway? Are we still using this to keep gays out of the military? There are so many areas that need to be changed, and so many questions that need updating... I know it's a good old warhorse, but really people. Sheesh! And don't anyone say the words, "dissertation topic!" about this either. I'm learning that one cannot whine in graduate school without being told to shut the hell up and do you dissertation on it if you're so fired up. LOL! True enough, but there is only room for one topic, you know? So hard to choose...
The prof for the personality testing class was all lit up, and set fire to our class as well, because there is a local company that is giving the MMPI to all its employees but has no Clinical Psychologists interpreting it. I suspect this is an 'insurance measure' so that if they have a problem with an employee then can then have someone score it and use the data in court (If they can make it work for them anyway) but in the mean time, where is that data stored? The MMPI has some alarmingly pejorative sounding scales, like Hypochondriasis, Psychopathic Deviance, Schizophrenia and so forth, not to mention the masculinity and femininity scales. So many things can give 'false positives' on these scales that it really is critical you know what the hell you are doing when you read them. So these files sit in the company database accessable to whom? Oh I bet that makes fun office talk! I'm not sure if it's illegal to do this if you aren't actually scoring them, but I sure as hell wouldn't take this test if I didn't have the level of confidentiality ensured by a mental health provider. Wow.
I had a totally surreal and completely delightful expereince playing World of Warcraft in person next to one of my research team at school. (three of us are doing a research project on WOW to present at the 2008 APA conference) I got the expansion pack so I have new characters and new places to go and things to do. His puter is too old to take the expansion so he can't use it. He'd think about upgrading but he's already a borderline addict and fears this would push him over the edge and he'd disappear into cyberspace, never to return. LOL! I shouldn't joke about it though, it's a serious problem for many people, but needless to say, offering him an opportunity to play on the expansion was like offering a heroine addict a kilo of junk.
Anyway, we had teamed up briefly from home, but it was just odd to be playing at school with classmates all around watching. It felt almost exhibitionistic. Hmm... and now he wants to coopt a projection screen at the dinner break and play it on a grand scale. Double hmm... Anyway, I love hearing the reactions and it may be there's a study just in observing how we are observed on this! Hell there's definitely a case study in the making as this guy, who is at the highest level in the non-expandned game, showers me with gifts of virtual gold, parrots and enchantments (all in the name of research, of course). He even gave me an enchanted ring! Thankfully he is unquestionably gay, and that makes it easier for my husband, but even so it's weird, and what if he weren't gay? How would that feel? Good Lord, if you told me back in the 1980s, when I was happily paying Pac Man and writing simple little adventure games in BASIC programming languave that I would someday be playing videogames as part of my doctorate I would have herniated myself laughing!
In other news, next week I will meet with my prof to put togehter a plan for my mother with respect to her memory problems. She took all the raw data this week, along with as much of a write up as I was capable of at my level, and will mull it over this week before we meet. I'm very excited to put together a 'mental theray' program for her that might really make a difference. This could be a big part of my practice eventually, seeing as the number of Alzheimer's sufferers is skyrocketing. Mom does not have ALS, but suffers from post stroke and Normal Pressure Hydrocephaly effects. This feels like such important work, I am delighted to be a part of it! Nowhere does the blurring between medical and mental health feel clearer to me than here.
Speaking of that, the visit was not stressful in the ways I had expected and the ability to slip away each evening to a wonderful dinner and soak in a jacuzzi was soooo, nice! We stayed with good friends of my sister who have a little guest house (they call it thier casita since it's Spanish style architechture) that we used. Mom told me several times how much she enjoyed the one on one time with me and no matter how gruelling the testing sometimes got, she complained if I suggested we take a break. Because there was an important purpose to all this, I was able to keep her all to myself and my Dad reined in his narcissism enough to let us get the work done. Three and a half days in which the focus was not all about him was tough for him, but to his credit he weathered it well and didn't have a single tantrum. A few fussy spots, but nothing too dramatic. Joy! Gus had a good time too, but was SOOOO ready to come home to his favorite person. My Brother in Law was there for my Mom's birthday and brought his bird dog, Andelys. She's a sweetie and very well behaved, but she wanted to point at Gus, seeing as that is her raison d'etre. Gus said over and over, "Stop STARING!" LOL! No idea where he has heard that but he sure knew when it was appropriate to say it. That bird never ceases to amaze me.
Anelys learned that jacuzzis are even better than swimming pools and we had a hell of a time keeping her out. Will come back later and edit in a pic of her in the pool. Wish I'd gotten one of her in the jacuzzi, but we were IN it at the time and there are some places I don't take my camara.
Well Gus is saying "meow" which means he wants to be taxied to see his one and only true love; my husband. LOL! What breed of cat is briliant green yellow and orange? And I need to be doing something educational... any one of a number of things. Sigh...
So I took the MMPI this morning, as we have agreed that all us students will take it ourselves and then the prof will go over it with us individually, since it's a little dicier to do this one on friends and family. Great fun; can't wait to see my results. Hoping my Psychopathic Deviance score is nice and low... I lied my ass off of course, and pretended to be a caring, sensitive person. LOL! JK. That test just screams to be updated, you know? What the hell is the point of the masculinity/famininity scale anyway? Are we still using this to keep gays out of the military? There are so many areas that need to be changed, and so many questions that need updating... I know it's a good old warhorse, but really people. Sheesh! And don't anyone say the words, "dissertation topic!" about this either. I'm learning that one cannot whine in graduate school without being told to shut the hell up and do you dissertation on it if you're so fired up. LOL! True enough, but there is only room for one topic, you know? So hard to choose...
The prof for the personality testing class was all lit up, and set fire to our class as well, because there is a local company that is giving the MMPI to all its employees but has no Clinical Psychologists interpreting it. I suspect this is an 'insurance measure' so that if they have a problem with an employee then can then have someone score it and use the data in court (If they can make it work for them anyway) but in the mean time, where is that data stored? The MMPI has some alarmingly pejorative sounding scales, like Hypochondriasis, Psychopathic Deviance, Schizophrenia and so forth, not to mention the masculinity and femininity scales. So many things can give 'false positives' on these scales that it really is critical you know what the hell you are doing when you read them. So these files sit in the company database accessable to whom? Oh I bet that makes fun office talk! I'm not sure if it's illegal to do this if you aren't actually scoring them, but I sure as hell wouldn't take this test if I didn't have the level of confidentiality ensured by a mental health provider. Wow.
I had a totally surreal and completely delightful expereince playing World of Warcraft in person next to one of my research team at school. (three of us are doing a research project on WOW to present at the 2008 APA conference) I got the expansion pack so I have new characters and new places to go and things to do. His puter is too old to take the expansion so he can't use it. He'd think about upgrading but he's already a borderline addict and fears this would push him over the edge and he'd disappear into cyberspace, never to return. LOL! I shouldn't joke about it though, it's a serious problem for many people, but needless to say, offering him an opportunity to play on the expansion was like offering a heroine addict a kilo of junk.
Anyway, we had teamed up briefly from home, but it was just odd to be playing at school with classmates all around watching. It felt almost exhibitionistic. Hmm... and now he wants to coopt a projection screen at the dinner break and play it on a grand scale. Double hmm... Anyway, I love hearing the reactions and it may be there's a study just in observing how we are observed on this! Hell there's definitely a case study in the making as this guy, who is at the highest level in the non-expandned game, showers me with gifts of virtual gold, parrots and enchantments (all in the name of research, of course). He even gave me an enchanted ring! Thankfully he is unquestionably gay, and that makes it easier for my husband, but even so it's weird, and what if he weren't gay? How would that feel? Good Lord, if you told me back in the 1980s, when I was happily paying Pac Man and writing simple little adventure games in BASIC programming languave that I would someday be playing videogames as part of my doctorate I would have herniated myself laughing!
In other news, next week I will meet with my prof to put togehter a plan for my mother with respect to her memory problems. She took all the raw data this week, along with as much of a write up as I was capable of at my level, and will mull it over this week before we meet. I'm very excited to put together a 'mental theray' program for her that might really make a difference. This could be a big part of my practice eventually, seeing as the number of Alzheimer's sufferers is skyrocketing. Mom does not have ALS, but suffers from post stroke and Normal Pressure Hydrocephaly effects. This feels like such important work, I am delighted to be a part of it! Nowhere does the blurring between medical and mental health feel clearer to me than here.
Speaking of that, the visit was not stressful in the ways I had expected and the ability to slip away each evening to a wonderful dinner and soak in a jacuzzi was soooo, nice! We stayed with good friends of my sister who have a little guest house (they call it thier casita since it's Spanish style architechture) that we used. Mom told me several times how much she enjoyed the one on one time with me and no matter how gruelling the testing sometimes got, she complained if I suggested we take a break. Because there was an important purpose to all this, I was able to keep her all to myself and my Dad reined in his narcissism enough to let us get the work done. Three and a half days in which the focus was not all about him was tough for him, but to his credit he weathered it well and didn't have a single tantrum. A few fussy spots, but nothing too dramatic. Joy! Gus had a good time too, but was SOOOO ready to come home to his favorite person. My Brother in Law was there for my Mom's birthday and brought his bird dog, Andelys. She's a sweetie and very well behaved, but she wanted to point at Gus, seeing as that is her raison d'etre. Gus said over and over, "Stop STARING!" LOL! No idea where he has heard that but he sure knew when it was appropriate to say it. That bird never ceases to amaze me.
Anelys learned that jacuzzis are even better than swimming pools and we had a hell of a time keeping her out. Will come back later and edit in a pic of her in the pool. Wish I'd gotten one of her in the jacuzzi, but we were IN it at the time and there are some places I don't take my camara.
Well Gus is saying "meow" which means he wants to be taxied to see his one and only true love; my husband. LOL! What breed of cat is briliant green yellow and orange? And I need to be doing something educational... any one of a number of things. Sigh...
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