Mutation

was doing well, but nowhere near what he’d done seven years previously. She also noted that VJ tended to hesitate before he answered a question or performed a task. It was like he wanted to be doubly sure of his choice.

“Very good!” Jean said when they’d reached the completion.

“Now how about the personality test?”

“Is that the MMPI?” VJ asked. “Or the MCMI?”

“I’m impressed,” Jean said. “Sounds like you have been doing a little reading.”

“It’s easy when one of your parents is a psychiatrist,” VJ

said.

“We use both, but let’s start with the MMPI,” Jean said.

“You don’t need me for this. It’s all multiple choice. If you have any problems, just yell.”

Jean left VJ in the testing room, and went back to the reception desk. She called the service and got the pile of messages that had accumulated. She attended to the ones that she could and when Marsha’s patient left, gave her the messages she had to handle herself.

“How’s VJ doing?” Marsha asked.

“Couldn’t be better,” Jean reported.

“He’s being cooperative?” Marsha asked.

“Like a lamb,” Jean said. “In fact, he seems to be enjoying himself.”

Marsha shook her head in amazement. “Must be you. He was in an awful mood with me.”

Jean took it as a compliment. “He’s had a WAIS-R and he’s in the middle of an MMPI. What other tests do you want? A Rorschach and a Thematic Apperception Test or what?”

Marsha chewed on her thumbnail for a moment, thinking.

“Why don’t we do that TAT and let the Rorschach go for now.

We can always do it later.”

“I’ll be happy to do both,” Jean said.

“Let’s just do the TAT,” Marsha said as she picked up the next chart. “VJ’s in a good mood but why push it? Besides, it might be interesting to cross check the TAT and the Rorschach if they are taken on different days.” She called the patient whose chart she was holding and disappeared for another session.

After Jean finished as much paperwork as she could, she returned to the testing room. VJ was absorbed in the personality test.

“Any problems?” Jean asked.

“Some of these questions are too much,” VJ said with a laugh. “A couple of them have no appropriate answers.”

“The idea is to select the best one possible,” Jean said.

“I know,” VJ said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

At noon, they broke for lunch and walked to the hospital.

They ate in the coffee shop. Marsha and Jean had tuna salad sandwiches while VJ had a hamburger and a shake. Marsha noted with contentment that VJ’s attitude had indeed changed. She began to think she had worried for nothing; the tests he was taking would probably result in a healthy psychological portrait. She was dying to ask Jean about the results so far, but she knew she couldn’t in front of VJ. Within thirty minutes they were all back at their respective tasks.

An hour later, Jean put the phone back on service and returned to the testing room. Just as she closed the door behind her, VJ spoke up: “There,” he said, clicking the last question. “All done.”

“Very good,” Jean said, impressed. VJ had gone through the five hundred and fifty questions in half the usual time.

“Would you like to rest before the next test?” she asked.

“Let’s get it over with,” VJ said.

For ninety minutes, Jean showed the TAT cards to VJ. Each contained a black and white picture of people in circumstances that elicited responses having psychological overtones. VJ was asked to describe what he thought was going on in each picture and how the people felt. The idea was for VJ to project his fantasies, feelings, patterns of relationships, needs, and conflicts.

With some patients the TAT was no easy test to administer.

But with VJ, Jean found herself enjoying the process. The boy had no trouble coming up with interesting explanations and his responses were both logical and normal. By the end of the test Jean felt that VJ was emotionally stable, well adjusted, and mature for his age.

When Marsha was finished with her last patient, Jean went into the office and gave her the computer print-outs. The MMPI would be sent off to be evaluated by a program with a larger data base, but their PC gave them an initial report.

Marsha glanced through the papers, as Jean gave her own positive clinical impression. “I think he is a model child. I truly can’t see how you can be concerned about him.”

“That’s reassuring,” Marsha said, studying the IQ test results. The overall score was 128. That was only a two-point variation from the last time that Marsha had had VJ tested several years previously. So VJ’s IQ had not changed, and it was a good, solid, healthy score, certainly well above average. But there was one discrepancy that bothered Marsha: a fifteen-point difference between the verbal and the performance IQ, with the verbal lower than the performance, which suggested a cognitive problem relating to language disabilities. Given VJ’s facility in French, it didn’t seem to make sense.

“I noticed that,” Jean said when Marsha queried it, “but since the overall score was so good I didn’t give it much significance. Do you?”