Tests

As I read Jessica's posts in response to the first two cases in that section of BOL, I am struck by the use of the term "test." I recognize that patients (and therapists!) will try something out before adding it to their general living scripts, and that the reactions of self and others to this experiment may well be called a test. I recognize also that patients test therapists in order to see whether the interaction is safe. Yet you said that I had passed a test when a patient accepted a major intervention.

Do you regard everything as a test? Is it not possible for people to agree or disagree, to accept or reject a construct, to be right or wrong, outside of the test framework? If you define every interaction as a test, I suspect this useful concept will cease to have discriminatory meaning. Please elaborate your concept of a test and give a few examples of situations in which therapeutic change took place and there was no test.

• What is a Test? by Jessica Broitman, 1/15/97