Abstract :
Disregarding my empirically documented warnings to generations of students, I am ultimately
succumbing to my own eisegesis. In this article, I proffer a personal exemplar of low- and
high-inference interpretation of significant persons, events, and products during my professional
lifetime. These selected bits of data are contained in childhood and educational experiences,
three chronological periods, three 1949 Thematic Apperception Test (Murray, 1943) stories,
and bits of several poems. These data coalesce in an interpretive statement, analogous to an
assessment report but ultimately something more and something less than an optimal report. As
an interpretive schema, a hierarchal model of clinical inference illustrates and exemplifies employment
of distinct levels to increase the reliability of high-inference interpretation. While inadequately
equipped as a psychologist assessor for such self-scrutiny, this narrative may provide
a case history exemplar of a process that has relevance for myself, for the Society of
Personality Assessment, and for understanding personality within a human science aegis.
