Psych-blogging, installment 1

Today I made the two-hour trip to our see city from my college town so that I could begin my psychological evaluation. I believe the canons require only that the psych evaluation be made before ordination to the diaconate (I could look that up, but PDF files always cause such problems), but our diocese quite sensibly requires it before admission to postulancy.

The first part of the day was a one-hour session with the psychologist. A recently ordained deacon in my parish, who was also a member of my discernment committee, had described him to me as having "a flat affect." As it turned out, that was a bit like describing the Pacific Ocean as "a tad moist." He asked questions in an almost robotic voice and seemed to have no reactions to anything I said, except for some (by his standards) enthusiastic concurrence in some things I said about the study of Scripture. He didn't probe very deeply. Perhaps he will do so later, after he has reviewed the results of my battery of tests.

I then went off to get some lunch before returning for three hours of psychological testing. Now I have a modest interest in the mechanics and theory of psychological testing, and I would have been glad to sit down afterwards with the designers of the various tests and find out just what they were up to. Some of the questions were oddly fascinating. I hadn't taken any of the tests before, so I didn't have the problem that I have now when I'm asked to take some version of the Myers-Briggs test, where I can see my INTJ profile taking shape as I go through. There were six tests in all, and I want to think a bit about each of them.