Working with “Levels of Information” in Therapeutic Assessment Using the Crisi Wartegg System | Workshop C (7 CE Credits)

Jacob A. Palm, PhD, serves as the founder and director of the Southern California Center for Collaborative Assessment.  He is the United States representative of the Istituto Italiano Wartegg in Rome, Italy, where he works closely with Dr. Alessandro Crisi on clinical applications, research, and training of the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test.  Dr. Palm is on staff at Miller Children’s Hospital at Long Beach Memorial and provides assessment consultation to various programs throughout the southern California area, including the Centers for Professional Recovery. He provides integrated assessments as a member of the Teen Brain Team at Hoag-Presbyterian Hospital, Neurosciences Institute (Newport Beach).  Dr. Palm completed his doctorate at Fordham University, in the Bronx, New York.  He has previously served as the Director of APA Internship Training and Director of Psychological Assessment for The Guidance Center, a community mental health center, in Long Beach, California.

Stephen E. Finn, PhD, founder of the Center for Therapeutic Assessment, is a licensed clinical psychologist in practice in Austin, Texas, USA, a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, Senior Researcher and Director of Training at the European Center for Therapeutic Assessment at Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and Director of Training at the Asian-Pacific Center for Therapeutic Assessment in Tokyo, Japan. He has published 90+ articles and chapters on psychological assessment, psychotherapy, and other topics in clinical psychology, and is the author of In Our Clients’ Shoes: Theory and Techniques of Therapeutic Assessment (Erlbaum, 2007) and A Manual for Using the MMPI-2 as a Therapeutic Intervention (1996, University of Minnesota Press). Dr. Finn also co-edited, with Constance Fischer and Leonard Handler, Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment: A Casebook and Guide (Wiley, 2012). In 2011 Dr. Finn was awarded the Bruno Klopfer Award from SPA for distinguished lifetime contributions to the field of personality assessment. In August 2017 he received the award for Distinguished Contributions to Assessment Psychology from Section IX (Assessment) of the Society for Clinical Psychology (Division 12 of APA). In 2018 he received the Carl Rogers Award for an outstanding contribution to theory and practice of humanistic psychology from the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Division 32 of APA).

Alessandro Crisi is an Italian psychologist who lives in Rome where he works as a private professional. He studied at Sapienza University of Rome where he received his Psychology Degree in 1976. Between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Crisi completed his psychotherapy training with Professor Lucio Pinkus of the D.G.G. Berlin (Germany). He had many periods of voluntary service (each lasting approximately one year) as assessment psychologist, including: the Psychiatric Hospital of "S. Maria della Pietà" in Rome; the "C. Forlanini" Hospital of Rome in the field of psychosomatic disorders; and the Institute of Neurology of the "A. Gemelli" Hospital of Rome in the field of multiple sclerosis.

In 1982 Dr. Crisi received a diploma in Sport Psychology from “Sapienza” University of Rome, subsequently working for many sporting leagues. After these initial training experiences, his career has mainly developed in 3 different directions: teaching, psychotherapy, and assessment.

Since 1999, Dr. Crisi has taught “Clinical Assessment” as adjunct professor at the Sapienza University of Rome and in other private Schools of Specialization in Rome. Trained as a psychodynamic psychotherapist, Dr. Crisi works primarily in assessment (including the clinical, forensic, selection and career guidance fields).

Dr. Crisi has extensive experience working with performance-based personality tests, most significantly with the Wartegg Drawing Completion Test created by Ehrig Wartegg in 1926. Dr. Crisi has developed a new system of use and interpretation for the Wartegg Test, called the CWS (Crisi Wartegg System). The CWS is currently used in many fields of assessment in Italy. Since 2002, the Italian Armed Forces has consistently utilized the CWS in its Selection and Careers Guidance proceedings. Dr. Crisi authored the Manuale del test di Wartegg [Handbook of the Wartegg test] published by E.S. Ma.Gi (1998, 2007) and co-authored with Bianchi and Di Renzo Il test di Wartegg nell’età evolutiva [The Wartegg test in the developmental age] published by E.S. Ma.Gi (1996). He has also written numerous articles and book chapters, and presented at numerous professional conferences.