Performance-Based Personality Assessment and the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders

Steven K. Huprich, PhD, ABPP, retired as a professor of psychology in 2025 after 26 years in higher education, and is currently Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Western Michigan University. He is also Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Mind and Personality in Northville, Michigan. Board certified in clinical psychology, Dr. Huprich has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and 24 book chapters, as well as several books. He has served as President of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders, Editor of the Journal of Personality Assessment, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality Disorders. Dr. Huprich is the recipient of the Theodore Millon Mid-Career Award in Personality Psychology from the American Psychological Foundation, among other honors. He is a Fellow of Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) and Division 29 (Psychotherapy) of the American Psychological Association, and a Fellow of the Society for Personality Assessment. John T. Rucker, PsyD, is an early-career researcher and licensed psychologist. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program at The Austen Riggs Center and a psychoanalyst-in-training at the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Rucker additionally holds a position as Clinical Affiliate Assistant Professor within the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine. He has published several peer-reviewed papers on topics including psychological assessment, performance-based personality testing, personality pathology, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

aEURoeThis landmark volume successfully bridges contemporary dimensional models of personality pathology with the rich clinical tradition of performance-based assessment. As a scientist-practitioner, I have long been waiting for a resource like this. The book offers a sophisticated, systematic integration of the AMPD framework with diverse instruments, such as Rorschach methods, the Thematic Apperception Test, attachment-based measures, sentence completion tests, and projective drawing. The practical guidance and focus on severity of personality dysfunction make this book especially timely for use in training graduate students and clinicians in ICD-11 classification of personality disorder.aEUR--Bo Bach, PhD, DMSc, Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen; Center for Personality Disorder Research, Slagelse Psychiatric Hospital, Denmark aEURoeThis text captures the commonalities and bidirectional synergy between the AMPD and performance-based multimethod assessment. It illustrates how Criteria A and B both inform and are enriched by performance-based methods. Grounded in robust theory and empirical research, the volume rejects cookie-cutter formulas. Insights from pioneers in the field are combined with extensive clinical examples, providing a flexible scaffolding on ways clinicians can assess for and integrate AMPD language within a multimethod framework. Digestible for graduate students to senior clinicians, this clinically useful book has provided me with additional resources and strategies to incorporate into my teaching and clinical practice.aEUR--Michelle B Stein, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital aEURoeAn important and timely contribution. Huprich and Rucker bring together leading clinician-scholars to provide an accessible, empirically informed guide to integrating performance-based methods with the AMPD. Particularly valuable is the bookaEUR (TM)s emphasis on multimethod assessment--demonstrating how performance-based measures can complement self-report data and illuminate dimensions of personality functioning and/or traits that may otherwise remain less visible. Exemplary clinical applications are provided. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking a nuanced, scientifically grounded approach to understanding personality pathology and advancing evidence-based assessment.aEUR--Carla Sharp, PhD John and Rebecca Moores Professor and Associate Dean, University of Houston aEURoeThis valuable work demonstrates how the criteria from the AMPD can be conceptualized and assessed using tasks of typical performance, such as the Rorschach Performance Assessment System, as opposed to tasks of maximal performance or self-reports of personality. The volume links typical performance measures to the AMPD, explores the use of specific instruments, and uses multimethod cases to illustrate degrees of severity in personality disorder psychopathology and to address particular assessment contexts. This unique and helpful text is a crucial resource for clinical assessment students, practitioners, and researchers.aEUR--Gregory J. Meyer, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Toledo -