From: Robert M. Gordon’s Child Custody Evaluations: Psychologist or Detective?
Pennsylvania Bar Institute 2002
Child Custody Evaluations: Psychology or Detective Work?

Chapter I
Models of Child Custody Evaluation

The earliest model was the medical approach of psychiatry with the emphasis of the mental status examination to arrive at a diagnosis. Here the psychiatrist would interview the parent (often just one parent) to determine a psychiatric diagnosis. The main question would be if a parent is fit or not based on a diagnosis. However, many custody litigants do not have a clear cut diagnosis that can help to determine the best interest of the child. Even if a parent did have a clear cut diagnosis, would a depressed mother be better or worse than a narcissist father? The problem is that this methodology is based on a disease model of an individual, and not based comparing both parents in an interpersonal system within an adversarial forensic context. Often times, one parent would get one psychiatrist and the other parent would get another psychiatrist. Each psychiatrist would be working for a party. When one party retains an expert, that expert might develop an unconscious allegiance to that party. Also, the methodology of just interviewing a person to determine a diagnosis is very difficult in child custody evaluations. The psychiatric interview is inadequate to deal with the great degree of distortion in terms of positive self-presentation and demonization of the other party. The reliability and validity of this methodology is poor for child custody evaluations.

Next came social work’s home study methodology employing observations of the child’s actual context. The advantage of this methodology is that it took the methodology out of the psychiatric consulting room with its individual disease model, into the actual ecologically valid context of the child’s home. The social worker often trained in family interaction got to see members relating to one another. They also made judgments concerning parental ability based on the physical home environment. The downside of this is the over emphasis of the physical environment (other than obvious problems of neglect and signs of potential physical dangers). For example, is a messy housekeeper a negligent mother? Is an obsessively clean and neat mother a warm and empathic mother? Social workers also did not have the training to recognize often-subtle psychopathology such as personality disorders in the parents. They often would report parents’ complaints, but had no objective means of finding external sources of verification. Though courts would sometimes use a combination of both psychiatric interviews of the parties, and a home study, since both of the methodologies have low reliability and validity, their combination did not help the situation.

By the 1980’s clinical psychologists, because of their use of scientifically reliable and validated psychological testing and research background, began to eclipse psychiatrists and social workers as the expert in child custody evaluations. Clinical psychologists were trained in both the psychiatric model of interviewing for a diagnosis and in general systems theory often used in social work to understand family systems and family dynamics. They were also trained to undertake and interpret research. Clinical psychology research refuted the widely held bias that children are best off with mothers having primary custody. Clinical psychologist relied heavily on research findings for their conclusions to understand issues in general. But most importantly, clinical psychologists employed a variety of psychological tests that could be brought together into a more scientific understanding of personality and interpersonal dynamics to deal with each case specifically. Research is valuable for generalizations, but scientific testing helps with conclusions for individual cases.

Objective tests such as the MMPI-2 presents standardized questions in which the testee simply responds true or false to the various questions. The patterns of responses are compared to norms that had been scientifically collected in which there is known data about that normative group. For example, the Schizophrenia scale was developed on a norm group of schizophrenics. The more a person responds to items in a manner similar to the original group of schizophrenics, this will lead to an elevation in that scale. The psychologist then will interpret this elevation in schizophrenia and will have to determine why the person responded in a manner similar to schizophrenics. The administration and scoring of this test is objective and reliable. There are several such objective personality inventories such as the MMPI-2. The MMPI-2 is generally regarded as the best.

There are also projective tests such as the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), sentence completions, and drawings. The person projects his or her own issues onto an ambiguous situation. The psychologist interprets these systematic distortions in the testing situation and sees if they relate to systematic distortions in their perceptions of reality in general. They often do, but not always. If a person draws, writes about, and interprets ambiguous pictures with an unusually high degree of aggression, then that person at least has a lot of aggressive feelings. (It is another matter to conclude that that person will act on such fantasies, or engaged in past acts of aggression.)

Intellectual functioning may also be an issue to be assessed when there is concern about whether a parent may have the intellectual skills for responsible parenting. The psychologist may use surveys to allow the parties in the comfort of their homes, where they are not tense or rushed, to more easily give detailed histories and descriptions of critical incidents.

The clinical psychologist was trained to rely mostly on the scientifically validated tests for his or her conclusions. The problem with this is that there is no simple test or test battery to determine the best interests of a child for custody determinations. Even a huge battery of tests will not be able to make this determination. I have seen some psychologists give a great many psychological tests giving the impression of thoroughness. This is very expensive for the parties and the tests are mainly redundant. The MMPI-2 asks 567 questions. That covers just about every personality issue. Giving other tests with the same format will hardly offer much more information, particularly if the testee is trying to fake the tests to look good. The MMPI-2 has the best validity and bias scales of any test. The MMPI-2 is the best test for measuring defensiveness. So why load on more of the same methodology to get more faked results?

Clinical psychologists were not trained to doubt or question their patients. They often make the mistake that affect validates content. Emotions can be faked, or they can be real, but based on sincere pathological distortions. I have often seen in psychological reports, “His emotions were appropriate given the reality of the situation.” If the psychologist did not try to validate the claims, then how does the psychologist know that the party’s emotions are appropriate? I often refer to film. If an actor can convince an audience of his or her role, then isn’t it possible to be fooled by someone?

Recently in court I was asked by an attorney what diagnosis I would give to a mother I had evaluated. I tried to get out of giving a diagnosis, since once that becomes the issue, the other attorney can easily find another psychologist who disagrees with that diagnosis. I explained that the mother’s behaviors indicated paranoia, since she saw danger and harm in normal situations. I gave concrete examples of her misinterpretations of events and over reactions. At the insistence of the attorney I finally stated that she had Paranoid Personality disorder. Eventually, another psychologist testified and said that based on his findings he felt that there were no signs of paranoia. He went on to state that if she were paranoid, it would be very obvious in his interview. When he was showed the criteria for Paranoid Personality disorder, and asked, “Doctor how would you know if these criteria applied to the mother if you didn’t check out to see if in fact they were true or not?” The psychologist who had followed a strict clinical psychology model, admitted that he does not do collateral interview of witnesses or review documents such as police reports, and had to state that is was possible that she was paranoid, if the things she were claiming were indeed not true.

By the 1990’s Forensic Psychology has been recognized as a specialty within psychology requiring extensive training and experience in the interface of law and psychology. Clinical Psychologists primarily relied on the use of psychological testing to formulate their conclusions. The methodology of psychological tests is limited to a person’s responses to controlled stimuli. This works best for patients who voluntarily seek treatment and wish to disclose their problems. But custody litigants have strong motives to present themselves as superior individuals and the other parent as a person with many psychological problems. For the most part, psychological tests will show that they are exaggerating (as indicated in custody litigant norms). They commonly tend to fake to look good, and the clinical scales typically indicate a false negative-normal looking profile.

Each test and methodology has its advantages and disadvantages. Each test result should only be considered as producing a hypothesis to be confirmed by the use of other methodologies such as: interviewing, document reviews, collateral witnesses and observations. Where the attorney may feel that one rotten apple may ruin the bunch, when it comes to any single psychological procedure, the psychologist is less concerned about the inherent weaknesses of any one procedure. This is why the American Psychological Association Guidelines for Child Custody Evaluations (Association. 1994)emphasized the use of multiple means of gathering data. The forensic psychologist is aware of the limits of any given method, but uses the confluence of different methodologies. When there is a pattern that cuts across different methodologies, there is confidence in the interpretations, recommendations and conclusions.

The forensic psychology model believes that there are no specific tests for child custody determinations and does not rely on them to the degree of the earlier clinical psychology model. The forensic psychologist besides testing, interviewing and parent/children observations, goes further to check out inconsistencies with interviewing collateral witnesses, document reviews, watching parents reactions to each other in conjoint interviews when inconsistencies are explored.

The forensic psychologist is aware of the psycho-legal issues, rules of evidence and court room issues that are often unfamiliar and disconcerting for many mental health professionals. Therefore the forensic psychologist is able to avoid many of the pitfalls in report writing and testifying.

The matter of tracking down relevant accusations in the context of a child custody evaluation often involves detective work. Traditionally, psychologists are not taught to question and try to independently try to verify the claims of a person. The examining psychologist is confronted with a client who is generally not forth coming with his or her personal psychological problems, but rather with individuals who will lie either due to long standing psychopathology and/or situational motives. The psychologist now is presented with accusations of neglect, aggression, drug abuse, sex abuse, irresponsibility and so on. These are serious maters to consider when it comes to the best interest of the child. The old psychiatric, social work, and clinical psychology methodologies are of limited help. There is no diagnostic interview, home study or psychological test that can determine is someone engaged in a past act. Psychological tests can hypothesize that such behavior is typical or not a given personality. But very disturbed individuals may never hurt anyone, and some rather normal individuals may do some very bad things.

I recommend a model of the “Psychologist-Detective” for child custody evaluations. I am not being literal about the role of “detective”, but rather I wish to emphasize the need to find out about the serious accusations that are often part of and crucial to child custody exams. The psychologist may be asked to come to conclusions about parental capacity, but leave the issue of lying and concerns about such matters as possible sex abuse or physical abuse to the courts. My role is not a tier of fact, to either establish credibility or culpability, but to psychologically assess the likelihood of past egregious behaviors that are crucial to the evaluation. Although the court determines the credibility of a witness, the psychologist needs to assess defensiveness, lying behaviors and pathological distortions, such as delusions. And the court is also the only venue for establishing guilt or innocence, however the psychologist needs to investigate crucial relevant behaviors. Evaluators do have their opinions about accusations, but often avoid investigating them since they argue according to their traditional role, such investigating is not their job. Meanwhile, they do maintain a belief that will greatly affect their conclusions. It is not helpful and may even be detrimental for a psychologist to make conclusions about parental capacity and the best interests of the child, without investigating serious accusations.

In this model, the psychologist gathers data about the various accusations, and then uses psychological testing, observations, interviewing the parties both individually and conjointly (to see their reactions as they are confronted by the other party), interview of witnesses and document reviews. I also use polygraph examinations. The validity, reliability, and accuracy rates of the polygraph is very similar to that of psychological tests such as the MMPI-2. However, the polygraph more directly seems to compete with the tier of facts role in determining credibility as compared to psychological test. Although once one lawyer questioned whether I could testify about the MMPI-2s Lie scale on the basis that it concerned a parties’ credibility. I argued successfully that the Lie scale is about defenses in general, not about the specific credibility of a person’s testimony. Since the polygraph findings cannot be used as the basis of conclusions in most courts, I use it exclusively as a means of investigation. I view the reactions to the request to take a polygraph, the confessions and the findings all as hypotheses to be confirmed against other sources of data. I consider the polygraph invaluable in dealing with accusations of sexual and physical abuse.

In this book I include a paper I presented to the International Symposium on the MMPI in Belgium in 1987(Gordon 1987). At that time I was recommending the regular use of the MMPI in child custody evaluations, and how the MMPI could be use to help detect subtle paranoia. I also addressed the issue of Parental Alienation Syndrome which was just introduced by Gardner (Gardner 1987). At that time, I was following a clinical psychology model of relying on psychological testing. Now, 15 years later, I am recommending the added use of a polygraph exam in certain cases. This represents a shift in my thinking towards a more investigative role in child custody evaluations. The paradigm switch is from the emphasis of drawing conclusions based on the personalities of the parents, to investigating the relevant accusations of specific behaviors that led to the custody evaluation.

Here are a few examples of psychological detective work in Child Custody Evaluations.

Example 1: The daughter tells her mother that, “Daddy put his finger around my pee-pee, and he licks it.” There is no physical evidence and the little girl later refuses to talk about it to children and youth investigators. It is considered “unfounded”, but the mother remains convinced that her husband committed sex abuse. This is the last straw in their strained married and she leaves, and refuses to let him visit with his daughter. (Note that the suspicion is before a separation or custody dispute.) In the interviews the mother gives a consistent, plausible history. The observations show a close healthy relationship with her daughter. Her psychological testing indicates that she took the test honestly and had a normal profile, which is consistent with her history and my observations. The daughter did tell me that her father touched and kissed her “pee-pee”, pointing to her vaginal area (but this also happens in fabricated stories). She is very reluctant to talk about it and seems very nervous. (In false claims children seem less anxious and tell a rote and often-consistent story.) The father was very ingratiating and yet defensive in the interviews. His psychological testing indicated defensiveness, poor impulse control and immaturity. I encouraged the father to rationalize inappropriate behavior, by saying that such playfulness is natural and common in some cultures, but is often misinterpreted by others. The father then gives rationalizations for his touching his daughter, by stating that it was not sexual but playful, and that she enjoyed it. He went on to state that his wife exaggerated what had happened to punish him. He refused to take a polygraph exam since he said that it was a violation of his rights, but that he would swear on a bible instead. The daughter-father observation showed that the daughter was intermittingly aggressive, anxious and affectionate with her father. A few collateral witnesses stated that the father was very immature and had a drinking problem. The combination of data made me feel that the father was capable of sexually abusing his daughter, and I recommended only brief supervised visits and treatment for the father.

Example 2: A mother after her two year olds visit to her father complains that her bottom hurts. The daughter says, “Daddy put soup up my bottom.” The mother immediately assumes that this means sex abuse and files a complaint with child and youth services. They find no evidence for sex abuse, but never the less the mother gets a court order limiting the father to only supervised visits. The father appears suspicious of me, and was very reluctant to have an examination by a psychologist. His psychological tests indicate a normal personality and a valid profile. This is consistent with his history and my observations. He describes his former wife as very suspicious and always distorting things so that she is always taking offense and feels like the victim. The mother is very pleasant and seems well adjusted. Her psychological testing however is associated with paranoid traits. One witness also described the mother as often misinterpreting even the most benign comments as slights against her. The review of documents is at odds with several of the mother’s claims against the father. The child reacted warmly to both parents. On the conjoint interview the mother’s distortions and anger come out in a manner totally different than when she was alone with me. When I asked the father to take a polygraph exam, he tearfully rose up from his seat and went over to shake my hand and said, “Thank God for that opportunity. She has been making my life hell. I want to take it.” He did, and he passed. When I told the mother that there was no evidence of sexual abuse, she felt that I was biased toward the father and treating her unfairly. I recommended joint physical custody (since their would be too much trauma with long separations between a very young daughter and her mother), and legal custody with the father.

Example 3: The father and step-mother seeking full custody of a 6 year old child claim that the mother is mentally ill and that she had physically attacked the step mother during an exchange. The step-mother filed criminal charges against the mother. The step-mother seemed overly controlling of the child in the observation session, and the father was passive and stayed in the background. The mother related very well to the child, as did her husband. Psychological testing showed that the mother to have a lot of neurotic problems, more so than the other adults. (At this point I believed the claims of the step-mother.) The step-mother’s mother claimed that she saw the attack, however when I kept questioning her over and over, she was inconsistent. At first, she claimed to have seen the mother attack her daughter and later stated that see didn’t actually see anything but heard the attack, and saw that her daughter was hysterical. The mother claimed that there was no attack at all, and that it was being fabricated by the step-mother. Usually people exaggerate or minimize an event to serve their needs, but it is rare for one party to say that they were attacked and press charges, and the accused to state that that event never happened. When I offered the mother justifications and rationalizations, the mother refused them and just repeated, “It never happened.” The mother also had her witness; her husband who also described the same event without an attack. I finally suggested that both women take the polygraph exam. Both agreed. The mother took the exam and passed. The step mother cancelled the exam last minute claiming that she couldn’t get off from work, and that she couldn’t afford it. However, she also added, “Besides I felt justified in this instance because she (the mother) was being so uncooperative, I wanted to teach her a lesson.” The step-mother ended up confessing to making false charges against the mother (she later denied making that confession to me.) At the advice of her attorney, the step-mother dropped the charges, but later filed a sex abuse charge against the mother. I investigated that as well, and again found the step-mother to be fabricating. I recommended continued primary custody with the mother.

Example 4: A mother claims that once her husband beat her. She said that she could prove that it happened since it is on a police report. The mother was upset when I asked her to get a copy of that report, and accused me of bias since I did not believe her. She stated that up until me, the pervious mental health professionals involved in the case had believed her, and she gave me her release to contact them. She saw their belief in her as independent support for her claims. Indeed, my interviews with her therapist and previous custody evaluator confirmed that they felt that she had been beaten. However, they never checked into the police report. The previous mental health professionals did not emphasize her motives to lie, and they did not work to investigate her claims of abuse. I finally got a copy of the police incident report. It stated that the officers came to the home after the mother called claiming that she was beaten. The husband stated that she was lying and that she wanted him removed from the home so that her boyfriend could move in. The police found no bruises, or redness in any of the areas where she claimed to have been attacked. They refused to force the husband to leave his house. Nevertheless, the next day the woman was able to get a protection from abuse order and had her husband removed from the house, and soon her boyfriend did move in with her. Her MMPI-2 looked normal except that her Lie scale was much higher than the norms for custody litigants. The father’s MMPI-2 was associated with anxious, passive individuals. Collateral witnesses stated that the mother was very manipulative, and they did not feel that the father would ever hit her. The father took and passed a polygraph exam, the mother refused to take it. The mother had alienated the children from the father, and they refused to see him. They made the visits with him very difficult. Ideally, the children should have been removed from the mother’s home and placed with the father, but I feared that the children would run away. I recommended that the father have legal custody of the children, and that the court appoint a mental health professional to help the children with their parental alienation, and slowly integrate them into the relationship with the father, with the eventual goal of the father having full physical custody of the children. (Richard Gardner(Gardner 2001) recommends in serious cases removing the child from the alienating parent. He presents good data suggesting that if children are placed with the “target” parent, they will improve. I suspect that he might be right, and I was wrong in this case.)

Chapter 2
The MMPI-2: What is it? How good is it? Use and Misuse. Scale definitions

History

The MMPI-2 is the best single psychological test to use for child custody evaluations.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is a true-false questionnaire measuring many components of personality. The MMPI (MMPI-2 is since 1989 is basically the same test with newer norms; unless stated otherwise I will use both terms as meaning the same) is the most objective psychological tests for assessing defenses and psychopathology. There are norms from many countries, and ethnic groups, and norms as extensive as 50,000 medical patients from the Mayo Clinic (Swenson, Pearson et al. 1973). By 1989, there were over 140 MMPI translations in 46 countries (Butcher 2000)]. It is the most researched and widely used personality inventory in the world (Piotrowski 1993; Graham 2000)(Butcher and Rouse, 1996; (Graham 1999) Piotrowski, Sherry and Keller, 1985 and 1985a; Piotrowski and Zalewoki, 1993).
Frank, Lindley, and Cohen (1981), in their comprehesive review for the Nuclear Regulartory Commission, considered the MMPI superior to other psychological tests, the polygraph, interviews, and background checks when the criteria included validity, reliability, compliance with legal issues, labor relations, and uniform guidelines on employee selection procedures, personal effects on applicants, and susceptibility to faking. Ackerman and Ackerman (Ackerman 1997) found that of psychologists who do custody evaluations (where psychological testing undergoes close scrutiny) 92% of them used the MMPI/MMPI-2 in 91% of their cases. No other test came close in terms of usage.

Stark Hathaway and Charnley McKinley, in about 1940, developed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) from a pool of over one thousand statements. Their goal was to develop a simple, objective test of many different types of psychopathology based on empiricism, rather than intuitively developed scales. They developed scales based on how known diagnostic groups of individuals responded to a pool of items. Those items which reliably differentiated a diagnostic group, such as people diagnosed as Hypochondriasis, from both medical patients and normals became the Hypochondriasis scale (Hs-1). By using actual criterion groups composed of patients, prisoners, or individuals who clearly fit a certain characteristic, they went on to develop the Depression scale (2), the Hysteria scale (3), the Psychopathic Deviate scale (4), the Masculinity-Femininity scale (5), the Paranoia scale (6), the Psychasthenia scale (7), the Schizophrenia scale (8), and the Hypomania scale (9). They also developed scales to measure validity and bias, i.e. the Lie scale (L), the Infrequency scale (F) and with Meehl, the Correction scale (K). Later, Drake developed a Social Introversion scale (0).

The MMPI’s10 basic clinical scales, Hypochondriasis (Hs-1), Depression (D-2), Hysteria (Hy-3), Psychopathic Deviate (Pd-4), Masculinity-Femininity (Mf-5), Paranoia (Pa-6), Psychasthenia (Pt-7), Schizophrenia (Sc-8), Hypomania (Ma-9),and Social Introversion (Si-0), are actuarial. They are comparative in nature. Actuarial information means that a person’s reactions to the items can be statistically compared to others, such as a norm group, or individuals suffering with conversion hysteria or schizophrenia. An item can function as a reliable stimulus that evokes a predictable response characteristic of a known group. For example, psychopathic individuals tend to deny certain items on a reliable basis, even though the items are typically true of psychopaths. These items have a discriminating power that is unrelated to what they appear to be assessing. For example, an item on the Psychopathic Deviate scale (Pd-4) states: “I have been quite independent and free from family rule.” This is often true of psychopathic individuals. They often have a history of not conforming to the structure and demands of institutions or relationships. Psychopathic individuals should respond “true” to this item, however they typically respond “false”.

Psychopathic individuals tend to react to that item in a predictable manner, and not in an insighful manner. Since psychopathic individuals resent any attempts at limit setting or obligation, they commonly complain about having their freedom infringed upon. They do not feel that they were free enough from family rule. This is how an actuarial scale works. If someone reacts to the items similar to the original normative group, such as psychopaths, then that person is likely to have some of the characteristics of a psychopath. The higher the score on the on the Pd-4 scale, the more similar the testee is to the original criterion group.

However, most people who score high in the MMPI Psychopathic Deviate Scale (Pd-4) are not Psychopaths. However, they will probably have some symptoms in common with individuals with a Narcissistic or Anti-social Personality Disorder.

The individual scales are often not sufficient to diagnose and predict behavior. For example, an elevation in the Psychopathic Deviate scale (Pd-4) does not mean that the person will be diagnosed a psychopath. In fact, for outpatients, an elevation in scale 4, Psychopathic Deviate (Pd), rarely is associated with an Antisocial Personality Disorder (the closest DSM diagnosis to the MMPI Psychopathic Deviate scale). A high elevation in Psychopathic Deviate is more often associated with interpersonal conflicts than criminal behavior in non-forensic samples. Other MMPI scales can help interpret elevations in the Psychopathic Deviate scale. For example, psychopathic tendencies are more likely if the Psychopathic Deviate scale (Pd) and Hypomania (Ma) are both among the highest clinical scales in the profile. The Psychopathic Deviate scale has subscales that can help interpret it’s meaning for a given individual.

There are also scales that are not derived from certain groups, but are content derived. That is they are scales simply composed of similar items that obviously assess certain symptoms. These content scales may help in interpreting the main clinical scales, but in child custody exams they are often of limited value since they are easily faked.

MMPI-2
The MMPI-2 was published in 1989, and is the newer form of the MMPI. The MMPI-2 has new norms, uniform T scores, some new scales, better wording and a very nice option of a short form providing the basic validity and clinical scales and subscales scored on the first 370 items.

There was a need to expand the item pool to deal with other problem areas such as eating disorders, drug and alcohol problems, type A personality, marriage and family problems, and treatment issues. Some of the items were reworded for clearer and more common usage. There was also a wish to develop new norms, since the original MMPI norms were based on a relatively small sample (724) of homogenous individuals, i.e. white rural Minnesotans. This sample of normals from the 1930’s and 1940’s are “too normal” for the average person of today. The revision helps the MMPI to be more acceptable and more easily understood to more people. The continuity between the MMPI and the MMPI-2 is virtually unchanged for the basic validity and clinical scales. The rewording of the items does not result in changes in the overall scores on the basic MMPI profile. The raw score results are comparable, but because of the new norms and uniform T scores,“High” on the MMPI is T 70, but it is T65 on the MMPI-2.

The MMPI-2 T scores are based on a sample of 2,600: 1138 males and 1462 females. Whereas, the original sample was essentially rural, white Minnesota men and women with a high school education, the MMPI-2 normative sample is of a much higher socio-economic status (SES), even higher than that of the 1980 census. Forty-nine percent of the new sample had a bachelors degree or higher. This could account for the higher means in the K scale and the MF scale for men on the MMPI-2, both associated with SES and intelligence. The MMPI-2 sample was collected from communities in seven states: California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. The sample was randomly solicited from a national sample, and the volunteers were paid for their cooperation. Also, extensive psychological data was obtained on these volunteers so that more could be learned about the relationship between normal range scores and psychological functioning.

370 Item Form
The original MMPI is long enough at 566 items. The MMPI-2 was almost published at
704 items! The MMPI-2 was reduced to 567 items ( possibly so that it would appear to be more like the original and thereby more acceptable to psychologists.) All the main validity scales ( L,F, and K ) and all the basic clinical scales and sub-scales (Harris and Lingoes, Subtle-Obvious and Si) can be scored on the first 370 items of the MMPI-2. With the original MMPI, here was a problem of the short form scores not being equivalent to the full MMPI, or not including the subscales. However, the 370 item form is not really a “short form” of the test but the “basic” or “main” form of the test, since all the basic scales are scored. Most times the first 370 items is all that needs to be given for individuals who are motivated to fake to look good. After that are mainly items that are obvious and easily faked.