Test Developer Profiles

Starke Rosecrans Hathaway, Ph.D.

Test Developed:

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI; with J. Charnley McKinley)

"With his consistent emphasis on objectivity and eclecticism, his insistence on data in preference to inference, his commitment to collegiality and scientific openness, and his scholarly respect for both the biological and psychological dimensions of human personality, Starke Hathaway has an assured place as one of the founders of modern clinical psychology"--so read the obituary for the co-developer of the MMPI, a test that in "its many versions and in nearly 50 languages... has been employed in hundreds of different research uses and practical applications for nearly five decades" (Dahlstrom, Meehl,and Schofield, 1986).

Born in Michigan, Hathaway spent much of his youth in Marysville, Ohio. He earned his bachelor's and master's degree at Ohio University in Athens and his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. Through the efforts of a psychiatrist at the University Medical School, J. Charnley McKinley, Hathaway was granted a position in the neuropsychiatry division. The two men would subsequently collaborate in the development of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathawayand McKinley, 1940).

Dahlstrom, Meehl, and Schofield (1986, p. 835) remind us that

Hathaway's identification with the MMPI overshadowed his equally important contributions as a teacher and therapist. He was a master clinician to whom medical colleagues frequently referred puzzling or difficult patients for diagnosis or treatment. The more difficult and challenging the case was, the more intense, persistent, and innovative were Hathaway's efforts. He rarely failed to achieve a significant result.... Many of Hathaway's treatment methods anticipated the behavioral interventions of of today, including such methods as mild aversive shock, suggestion and hypnosis, modeling, and habit retraining.

Hathaway's long list of lifetime achievements includes being recipient of the American Psychological Association's award for Distinguished Contributions for Applications in Psychology. Hathaway retired from the University of Minnesota in 1971, and he died in his home in Minneapolis on July 4, 1984.

"When I came to the University hospitals in about 1937 and began to work with patients, I started to change from a physiological psychologist toward becoming a clinical psychologist. As we went on grand rounds, I with my white coat and newly developing sense of role, expected that the medical staff would want the data and insights of a psychologist. I still remember one day when I was thinking this and suddenly asked myself, suppose they did turn to me for aid in understanding the patients' psychology; what substantive information did I have that wasn't obvious on the face of the case or that represented psychology rather than what the psychiatrist had already said. I could, perhaps, say that the patient was neurotic or an introvert or other such items suggested from my available tests. I had intelligence tests,... and a few other inventories. I didn't have any objective personality data that would go deeper or be more analytically complex than what would suggest general statements, such as that the patient was maladjusted.... [As] I then perceived [personality inventories, the] "The real impetus for the MMPI came from reports of results with insulin shock treatment of schizophrenia. The early statistics on treatment outcomes, as is characteristic of new treatment ideas, promised everything from 100% cure to no effect and no value. It occurred to me that the enormous variance in variables and interpretation were not in current jargon nor did they develop suggestions that would be of value to a staff required to make routine diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment decisions.

effectiveness as reported from hospital to hospital depended partly upon the unreliability of the validity criterion--the diagnostic statements. If there were some way in which we could pick experimental groups of patients using objective methods, then outcome tests for treatment efficacy should be more uniform and meaningful. I did not have any objective personality instrument that was adaptable to such a design; and, thinking about the needs, I got the idea of an empirically developed inventory that could be extended indefinitely by development of new scales." (S. R. Hathaway, quoted in Mednick et al., 1975, pp. 350--351)

References

Dahlstrom, W. G., Welsh, G. S.,and Dahlstrom, L. E. (1972). An MMPI handbook: A guide to use in clinical practice and research. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hathaway, S. R.,and McKinley, J. C. (1940). The MMPI manual. New York: Psychological Corporation.

McAllister, L. W. (1988). A practical guide to CPI interpretation (2nd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Mednick, S. A., Higgins, J.,and Kirschenbaum, J. (1975). Psychology. New York: Wiley.

James Butcher, W. Grant Dahlstrom, John R Graham, and Auke Tellegan

Test Developed: MMPI-2 --(not pictured- Auke Tellegan)

James Butcher was born in Bergoo, West Virginia, in 1933. He was orphaned when he was about 10 years old, and he and his four siblings raised themselves without adults in the home. After graduation from high school, he served in a combat infantry unit during the Korean War. He then worked as a private detective for two years before beginning college. In college, his first psychology course convinced him that he should pursue a career in psychology. He completed a B.A. in psychology at Guilford College in 1960 and then received two graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: an M.A. in experimental psychology in 1962 and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1964. He then began an academic career at the University of Minnesota, where he continues to teach and do research. In addition to his work on the MMPI and the MMPI-2, Professor Butcher has been actively involved in research in cross-cultural personality studies, computer-based personality assessment, and abnormal psychology. His contributions have been considered so significant that he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels in 1990.

W. Grant Dahlstrom was born in Minneapolis in 1922. As a child, he lived in a variety of places, including Montana, where he attended a racially integrated school on an Indian reservation, and Pennsylvania, where he attended a racially mixed high school. He returned to Minneapolis for college and graduate school. From the University of Minnesota he received his B.A. in 1944 and his Ph.D. in 1949 with Starke Hathaway as his mentor. He took teaching positions at Ohio Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa before joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952, where he remained until retirement. Professor Dahlstrom is well known for his reference works on the MMPI published in the 1950s. He has also completed research on achievement and ability in Black and White students in segregated schools and on the health sequelae of personality characteristics in undergraduates. He was honored with the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contribution to Knowledge in 1991 and with the Bruno Klopfer Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society for Personality Assessment in 1994. Although retired from the university since 1993, Professor Dahlstrom continues research in the areas of personality and health. John R. Graham is professor of psychology at Kent State University. He wrote the widely used text The MMPI: A Practical Guide in 1977, and in 1990 completed MMPI-2: Assessing Personality and Psychopathology, an authoritative guide to the revised test. Much of his published research has focused on specific issues surrounding the MMPI and the MMPI-2, including ethnic differences in response to the tests and personality profiles of pathological gamblers. Auke Tellegen (not shown) is at the University of Minnesota and has published extensively, not only on the MMPI and the MMPI-2, but also on topics including the measurement of personality, personality and stress in children and in adults, and genetics.