A clinical technique designed to study individual characteristics and mental states of a person. The questionnaire was developed in the early 1940s by Stark Hathway and John McKinley at the University of Minnesota. MMPI is the most studied and one of the most popular psychodiagnostic techniques, which has found wide application in clinical practice.
The method was based on a quantitative comparison of the answers of representatives of the normative group with the typical answers of patients in whom one or another syndrome clearly prevailed in the picture of clinical disorders: hypochondria, depression, hysteria, psychopathy, psychasthenia, paranoia, schizophrenia, hypomania. Although such names have been given to the basic clinical scales of the MMPI, their literal interpretation should be avoided; For example, it cannot be assumed that a high score on the schizophrenia scale indicates its presence.
Despite the fact that the MMPI method is based on the principle of a questionnaire, the assessment of the data obtained as a result of the study is based not on a direct analysis of the respondent’s answers, but on the data of the statistically confirmed significance of each answer in comparison with the average standard data. Therefore, it can be said that the method occupies an intermediate place between conscious subjective assessment and projective study of unconscious personality tendencies. In addition, the MMPI method is the most protected against attempts by respondents to deliberately distort the results, to present themselves in a different form.