There have been many recent experiments which have studied the relationships between perceptual behavior and need states The study which we are reporting here is basically personality-centered This means that we have used perceptual behavior as a means of studying personahty dynamics An extensive bibhography deahng with the correlations between needs and values and perceptual recognition thresholds for needrelated stimuli has accumulated A few examples of experiments in this area may be noted (1,2,5,6,7,8,9) Along with these experiments has come a great deal of controversial discussion concerning the nature of the relationships Many of the articles in this area have been concerned with the nature of the perceptual process itself In this paper we are not concerned with the controversial issues concerning the deiimtion of perception Regardless of the types of mechanisms and processes which may be involved, we believe that the obtamed correlations afford an excellent opportunity to study personality dynamics Clinical psychologists and personality theorists have always had as a main objectne the analysis of the motive systems of the individual and the ways in which he deals with them That defense mechanisms manifest themselves through such psychological processes as learmng and retention has not been subject to argument We have begun again to believe that perceptual behavior may also reflect such dynamic processes Let us consider s

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N A recent publication (14, p. 100), we asserted without documentation that "psychiatric diagnosis is too unreliable to permit derivation from our data of substantial conclusions...." At the time that this statement was written, it was the authors' impression that such a proposition was widely accepted and rested securely upon a solid foundation of published evidence. Other writers have made use of this same rationalization for discrediting the use of psychiatrically diagnosed criterion groups (e.g., 7, 13), but during one of our mea culpa moods it occurred to us to ask, "Just how unreliable are psychiatric diagnoses anyhow?" The present communication is a report of our odyssey in search of an answer to that question.

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