Truth & Consequences

A card game which is also a test for psychic abnormalities has been worked out by Drs. Starke R. Hathaway and John Charnley McKinley of the University of Minnesota. All the player has to do is go through 550 statements printed on cards, file each card as "true" or "false" or "cannot say."

Not embarrassing, but . . . Sample statements: "Much of the time my head seems to hurt all over"; "I have a good appetite"; "I have been disappointed in love"; "My soul sometimes leaves my body"; "I believe in law enforcement"; "I am never happier than when alone"; "When in a group of people I have trouble thinking of the right things to talk about"; "I wish I could be as happy as others seem to be"; "Everything tastes the same"; "I often memorize numbers which are not important (such as automobile licenses, etc.)"; "Someone has it in for me"; "If given the chance I could do some things that would be of great benefit to the world"; "In walking I am very careful to step over sidewalk cracks"; "I am not afraid of picking up a disease or germs from door knobs"; "I certainly feel useless at times"; "I think Lincoln was greater than Washington";* "My table manners are not quite as good at home as when I am out in company."

Some of the cards are useful in testing for hypochondriasis, some for depression, some for paranoia (a form of insanity characterized by peculiar kinds of delusions), some for masculinity v. femininity, etc. Many personality phases have 80 or more cards bearing on them, and many cards bear on several phases. There are 15 cards to detect whether the player is fibbing a little to put himself in a socially acceptable light. The answers required are not likely to be embarrassing, but the diagnosis a doctor can draw from them may be.

Personalities Gauged. By using this test on many healthy people and on mental cases diagnosed by experienced psychiatrists, the inventors of the game have learned the answers that are usual in different situations. A series of simple clerical manipulations (which his untrained receptionist can work out for him) gives a doctor a graphic picture of his patient's personality as the cards see it. The doctor need not even know what answers were given to individual questions.

Drs. Hathaway and McKinley first announced their "Multiphasic Personality Inventory" in 1940. Similar tests were already in existence, but none were as comprehensive as the 550-card set. Advantages of the cards: a patient's whole attention is more easily focused on one question at a time; filing cards is "less like signing your name to something you haven't read" than the ordinary truth & false tests.

Semi-Experimental. The inventors think their test should be useful not only to specialists but also to general practitioners. The cards not only help detect serious mental difficulty, but may point out, say, the patient with ulcers or allergies who needs "relief from psychoneurotic pressures." By using the inventory, a physician may know a new patient, in an hour or two, as well as his family doctor does. Besides helping the doctor diagnose, the test may help the patient by giving him "a nearly complete outlet for all he has to say." It "amounts to a mental catharsis . . . and in many cases has a direct therapeutic effect."

The test is not yet complete: additional personality traits detectable by the questions are being worked out. But though the card game is "semi-experimental," it is already the most widely popular test for its purposes--as of last week 230 sets (University of Minnesota Press, $15) were in use in universities, penitentiaries, corporations, clinics.

*"True" is the normal answer to this one.

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