NCJ Number
80897
Date Published
1981
Length
154 pages
Annotation
This volume shows how to detect and understand the feelings and impulses of people through their responses to a projective psychological test involving sentence completion. The test can be used to predict potentially violent behavior.
Abstract
The test reflects subjects' feelings and impulses in the way they complete unfinished sentences. A total of 73 incomplete sentences on various common topics are provided. The text explains how the way in which these sentences are completed reveals characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. It focuses particularly on methods for detecting the potential and probability for violence in the individual. Specific chapters address the occurrence of violence; attitude, sentence completion, and prediction; psychological assessments of violent persons, reasons for violence in the family, and the postdiction of violence. Also discussed are the history and development of sentence completion, 'tapping' mental process by sentence completion, the potential for violence in delinquents and young women, and family function and dysfunction. Case histories are provided. An index and 21 references are provided.