Psychological Self-Assessment Using The Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI)
If You Can Clearly Verbalize A Problem, The Solution Becomes Readily Available
As a clinical psychologist, over several decades, I have observed a phenomenon of some importance in how psychological assessment and psychotherapy could best begin and proceed. Typically, the clinician wants to assess you and your overall life circumstances. This might involve the administration of various questionnaires and personality assessments. This is done so clinicians can better understand how to address your particular needs.
My question to you is this: Is all of this necessary, especially since the best predictor of human behavior starts with simple questions calling for simple answers? Instead of relying on extensive assessments, direct questioning allows individuals to articulate their concerns, making the process more efficient and empowering. For example, the best predictor of your potential for a suicide attempt is to simply ask you.
Origin And Evolution Of The Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI)
Wanting to be transparent, I have a fairly extensive professional background in psychological assessment, having completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Center for Psychological Research in Princeton, NJ, and taught the subject within the graduate school training departments in Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and Indiana University at Bloomington. Also, I have administered hundreds of psychological assessments over the years.
Having said this, I decided years ago that we could cut to the chase, assessment-wise, and develop a psychological self-assessment tool, directly engaging clients in the assessment process simply by asking them to clarify their concerns. I wanted this process to be fully private, where only clients could access the resulting report, which carries the title “This is Me!” (clients can share PCI results with their clinician, but this is up to them). In so doing, we have eliminated evaluation apprehension and fears clients might have of being mislabeled with diagnostic terms, often unreliable and misleading.
I wanted a psychological assessment tool that clients could complete on their own, where clients decide what concerns them most, which also measures their changing concerns over time. Voila! The Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) measures over 1000 possible personal concerns in about 20 minutes. The PCI yields an immediate online report and lets you determine whether you have correctly self-assessed your concerns. This makes a lot of sense since you are the pivotal actor in the psychotherapy/counseling theater.
In so doing, we are bypassing a parental approach to helping others. We are elevating clients’ ability to quickly enter the therapy action scene as they learn to self-assess personal concerns before resolving them.
Self-Assessment Makes Focused Action Possible
People come to psychotherapy for one primary reason: they don’t feel the way they want to feel. What’s equally important is the fact they don’t know where their feelings are coming from.
Example: You feel your troubled relationship with your significant other is the result of personality differences when, in fact, you both are drinking too much, and this ultimately surfaces as the core issue. If you completed the PCI honestly and faced yourself head-on, you will have rated alcohol use as a significant concern. Then, you and your therapist/counselor can direct your therapy in the direction of overuse of alcohol (or other drugs). You can work on the central issue rather swiftly versus a few weeks of responding to various assessments and figuring out where to go from there.
You can take Focused Action because you have self-assessed your concerns, know what truly matters most to you, and are ready to do something about it—if you truly want to make changes in your life.
How The PCI Works
Finding your focus is your most important step toward rapid personal change. Effective goal setting requires focus. The PCI functions like a highly efficient, well-organized mind. Starting from the perspective of a wide-angle lens, you examine a panorama of possible concerns. The PCI automatically adjusts your lens, rapidly prioritizing these concerns according to their relative significance to you. Zooming in for a close-up, the PCI surfaces your most significant personal concern, available only to you in your “This is Me!” report.
Maintaining Consistent Focus
Maintaining consistent focus on your dominant concern, yes, over time, is your second important step. Rapid personal change is possible when you maintain your focus on the goal you consider most important. This is Focused Action.
Resolving Your Most Significant Concern
When you have resolved your most significant concern, you progress toward the resolution of your next most significant concern, which will be revealed in future PCI completions. Because life is a continuing process of challenge and resolution, continued use of the PCI provides a reliable tool for self-navigation in an ever-changing world.
Note: The PCI maintains your personal file and all past completions, which only you can access because you will have your unique access code and personal password. The PCI fully protects your personal information and identity through advanced encryption and a secure login system, ensuring confidentiality and data security at all times.
The Promise Of Rapid Change
Focus and mindfully directed attention are the most reliable paths toward rapid personal change, and they can help you willfully direct your life toward achieving valued goals.
Scientific Evidence Validating The Power Of Your Attention
Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, in his stirring book The Mind and the Brain, published in 2002, offers convincing scientific evidence of your ability to create the life you want to live—even to the point of physically reshaping the neural circuitry of your brain—all of this because of your innate capacity for sustained attention.
Quoting Dr. Schwartz:
“The power of attention not only allows us to choose what mental direction we will take. By actively focusing attention on one rivulet in the stream of consciousness, it also allows us to change—in scientifically demonstrable ways—the systematic functioning of our own neural circuitry.”
An abundance of ensuing neuropsychology research supports this bold assertion day after day, as this exciting new body of knowledge leads the way with ever-more convincing data. We become what we do, and our brain is capable of making constructive, adaptive changes along the way.
Be Your Own Psychologist
When you can clearly verbalize your personal concerns, solutions become readily available. The next step is to take decisive action to address them. The PCI equips you with the awareness and focus necessary to navigate life’s challenges with confidence and clarity.
Take charge of your personal growth today. The power to change is in your hands. You can cultivate resilience and achieve lasting transformation with the right mindset and focused action. You can be Relaxed, Balanced, Flexible, and Focused, the mantra of the Mulry Method.