A Study of Marriage Counselor's MMPI Profiles

Normative MMPI-2 Profiles of Christian Counseling Students: An Investigation of Subculture in Standardized Testing

“…In contrast to findings for these Christian counseling students, for a sample of counseling students that do not explicitly identify with a Christian worldview, the K scale average is elevated like that of this student sample, yet the L scale for that sample is not elevated (Phillips 1970). Counseling students who are members of a religious subculture generated elevated scores on the L scale.…”

“…As noted above, many attempts have been made to develop normative MMPI or MMPI-2 personality profiles for seminary students (Butcher 2001), clergy (Aleshire 1990;Bier 1948;Cardwell 1996;Celeste and Walsh 1997;MacDonald and Holland 2003;Moore 1936;Nauss 1968;Plante et al 2005;Taylor and MacDonald 1999), and counselors (Cottle and Lewis 1954;Heikkinen, and Wegner 1973;Phillips 1970;Wogan 1970;). A very limited amount of research has focused on clergy who were being trained as counselors (Jansen et al 1973).…”

“…A parallel development of the dissatisfaction with the use of primarily cognitive factors in assessment of students or for predicting success as a counselor trainee (Carney et al 1998;Smith 2004) has been the long history of attempts to develop normative personality profiles specifically for persons training for ministry or counseling (Aleshire 1990;Bier 1948;Butcher 2001;Cardwell 1996;Celeste and Walsh 1997;MacDonald and Holland 2003;Moore 1936;Nauss 1968;Phillips 1970;Plante et al 2005;Taylor and MacDonald 1999). From the earliest efforts of Thomas Moore (1936) to more recent researchers, a consistent rationale for objective personality assessment has not been merely to exclude from consideration those individuals with elevations on clinical scales of a personality test.…”

“…As would be expected, the size and range of variance as measured by standard deviation correspond to the heterogeneity of the samples. For example, the lowest range of standard deviations on the clinical scales of the MMPI are represented by the samples of male counseling students (Phillips 1970;Jansen et al 1973) and the lowest MMPI-2 variance results from the profiles of samples of male to female seminary students (Cardwell 1996). The largest average standard deviation on the MMPI-2 is that of a sample of self selected Canadian undergraduates who are described as being "religiously involved" (MacDonald and Holland 2003).…”

Self‐Actualization of Clergymen Rated High and Low in Clinical Competencies

“…Several studies have compared clergy-men with counselors or with counselors-intraining without making any attempt to evaluate the counseling and clinical competency of the clergymen per se. Phillips (1970) compared clergymen entering a marriage counseling training program with their psychologist counterparts on the scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory ( MMPI ) . Their similarities were much more marked than their differences.…”