The psychological assessment of abused and traumatized children

Francis Kelly offers a clinical paradigm for the personality assessment of abused or traumatized children via projective instruments - the TAT and Rorschach - and shows how various projective measures and indices can be utilized as sensitive barometers of changes in self-, object, and ego functioning following therapeutic interventions and other corrective experiences. Furthermore, integrating the tenets of trauma theory with those of psychoanalytic theory, he sets this clinical paradigm in a meaningful theoretical context, and draws on both theory and clinical experience to develop a comprehensive psychological composite of the child who has been maltreated.