The Indescribable Essence of Being Human

The Indescribable Essence of Being Human:

A Counselor’s Experiences with Psychological Testing

By Aki S.
Edited by Adora Du and Yasmin Landa

Human beings are created to be interconnected, social beings; we live in a world filled with colorful relationships. Even if at times, you feel socially, emotionally, or physically isolated, there are an infinite number of people in your past that still affect you today and will continue to do so as you move forward.

And yet when we try to operationalize and categorize and quantify and identify different traits and nuances of the human condition, there is a part of that process that removes the beauty in the humanity of humankind.

Imagine how you are across different situations. How you are with your parents versus with your friends, or how you are with your best friend versus someone you just met. You act differently in every situation depending on how you relate to each person. You are much more complex than a simple categorization. A label of "extrovert" or "introvert” can only begin to scratch the surface of who you are and what it means to be you. 

There are many psychological tests available, both in the mental health treatment context and as self-exploratory activities on the internet. And there are benefits to using these assessments and measures. These tests can be excellent ways to jump start your understanding of yourself, a way for you to think about your identity from a new perspective. It can simply be a fun way to kill time, or to use as a reference when you are feeling lost in life. 

However, they should also be used with a grain of salt - describing a personality on paper just doesn’t seem to do you justice. It doesn’t bring life to the detailed, complex, holistic person that you are. Your current circumstance, your mood when you take the assessment, your thoughts and fears and feelings in the moment. There are absolutely scientifically sound and robust assessments in the mental health field. And, it’s important to remember that they can encapsulate part of the essence of who you are, but it does not define you as an entire being.

When I practiced as a counselor in Japan, I would professionally administer many evidence-based tests on my clients - for example IQ score, generalized anxiety symptoms, and so on. It was both wonderful and detrimental that iIt would help me reduce the clients in front of me to specific numerical values and a baseline to start our work from.

One of my duties as a juvenile offense therapist in the Japanese Ministry was to provide a personal evaluation of each of my clients on my caseload. I would assess and write up a report about each offender based on the numerous assessments I administered, present it to their family, and pass on the information to someone who would further determine their sentence. 

An example of a write up sounded something like this:

He was raised with high expectations from his strict parents, who are obsessed with his grades and success in school. But, given his average IQ, his chances of being recognized by his parents are few. Therefore, he quickly blames himself when he fails, even in small things. Additionally, he tends to isolate himself because he fears others will discover his failures. To maintain self-esteem, he resorts to theft in order to satisfy his sense of accomplishment through self-effort as a countermeasure. Since the robbery target is limited to childish items such as stuffed animals, his unconscious desire to fulfill his parents' lack of affection seems to be a part of his crimes. For his positive development, placing him under 1 year of probation is recommended. During probation, it is essential to help him recognize the lack of affirmation and affection in his life at the level of consciousness through psychological therapy. It is also crucial to provide mourning sessions through art and group therapy to recover from the profound loss he will feel. Additionally, having him participate in community activities to build positive interpersonal experiences is highly recommended. Doing so will allow small failures in supervised settings and intentionally teach him to accept failures and continue to nurture a more resilient and adaptable personality. 

It was a heavy responsibility that weighed on me, that my categorization of these individuals would play a huge part in determining their life course. The tests I administered buried me in the deepest, darkest, most vulnerable places of the client’s history and mind. The process was set up so that we as counselors could most effectively, accurately, and efficiently be able to categorize offenders and decide how they should proceed in the legal system. 

I was able to gain a thorough assessment of this client’s most intimate life details and trajectory, and yet strangely, I will never know the most trivial things about this 11 year old boy. I will never know his favorite color or his favorite subject in school or what games he likes to play with his friends. I will never know why his favorite animal is a wolf but he is afraid of dogs. I will never know what he loves about waking up on Saturday mornings hearing the chatter of his parents gently in the kitchen, while the smell of breakfast drifts in the air. Maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe that has nothing to do with who this boy is, who we are. And yet, it makes me feel like the picture I am painting of each client has a gaping hole in the center.

These assessments and tests capture the entirety of who a person is, and yet it captures nothing at all.