Queering Psychological Assessment

The process of psychological assessment as it has been practiced for over a century has contributed to, reinforced, and promulgated White supremacist, cisheteronormative, and otherwise oppressive systems and structures. While maintaining the scientific rigor of research-backed tests, measures, and methods, the field needs to shift in order to be explicitly antioppressive. Queering psychological assessment—applying the tenets of queer theory and therapy to the assessment process—centers client identity, lived experience, narrative, and language in the test interpretation, integration, and conceptualization processes, with an emphasis on collaboration and an acknowledgement that much of what has been identified as psychopathology represents natural human diversity mismatched with a society that is built for those from dominant groups. This article discusses how queering psychological assessment can accomplish a shift from gatekeeping (resources, accommodations, access) to collaboration, partnering with clients to figure out how to improve their lives.