AN EVALUATION OF A UNIDIMENSIONAL SCALE OF THE SEVERITY OF BRAIN INJURY ON THE BASIS OF CLINICAL FINDINGS

In the psychodiagnostics of deviant individuals, the criterion problem has a crucial significance in the development of diagnostic methods. Only in the case of some deviant group (e.g. the blind) is the criterion of deviancy unambiguous and self-consistent. The majority of deviations clinical psychology has to deal with are multid-imensional in respect to their etiology as well as to their signs and symptoms. On the other hand, the investigation of deviancy may give valuable information of human behavior in general. For this reason, in particular, special attention should be paid to the criterion on the basis of which the breakdown into deviant and control group is effected. The criterion problem seems to be particularly difficult in the case of deviancy caused by brain injuries. The research results obtained so far have been contradictory owing, in part, to the very fact that the classification (into experimental and control group) can be performed according to different principles, none of which can be regarded either as absolutely irrelevant or as absolutely adequate. As an essential part of the validity of the methods of applied psychology is based on these outside criteria, the question of how they are formed cannot be regarded as immaterial. I n the studies of brain injured, there has been a general tendency to make the experimental group homogeneous in respect to the etiology, pathogenesis, type andlor location of the injury through including only “pure” cases in which the diagnosis can be considered indisputable. Yet the criterion problem can also be approached from another, inverse aspect, as it were: the difference among the subjects of the deviant group are made the point of departure. In doing so, the intrinsically complex structure of the problem will be simplified, of course, but on