Author: Evangelos Katsioulis, Consultant Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist
First publication: World Intelligence Network Online Editions (WIN ONE) Issue 1, 06/05/2004

Long ago, I started thinking of the psychological status, profile, conditions of the people passionate with intelligence testing and in a generalized level willing and seeking for trials and experiences in a test-taking process.

I was motivated to analyze the correspondent psychology of the under-testing person, since I have been one of these tests-lovers for a short period of my life. I realized that the number of tests I have taken caused comments like introversion, excessive need for self-satisfaction via a self-oriented and self-dependent procedure, unsocial behaviour and under- developed emotional status.

Initially I isolated and defined the two entities, psychology of the test-taker and testing process. Excessive involvement in a voluntary test-taking process can be interpreted in an internal need for recognition based on external criteria, commonly accepted and applied. On the other hand this enrollment could be an expression of the absence of other interests, a passion in the specific process, an addiction in the emotions of success and a personal satisfaction of the stressful experience the tested was involved in.

Intelligence tests were always a great challenge for me. The disclosure of the secret connective underlining formula the test- designer conceived and applied was my primal motivation offering me a satisfaction feeling each and every time I ended to a standard logic-based conclusion. It could be a paranoid schizophrenic diagnostic sign but using my mind to relate parts of a sequence was extremely entertaining and amusing, which initially was the main reason I spent many hours on various tests and types of tests.

Furthermore, the accomplishment of each analyzing process was motivating itself, since concentration and willing cannot easily grow under negative prospects and conditions. The multiplicity and multifactorial basis of these reasonings became more attractive to me and I could not replace this process with anything other similar or not at that period of my life. I was obsessed, totally devoted to this new world I was discovering within any new test, any new item. I was a test-taking maniac and this mania had overtaken my time, my other interests and needs. I was addicted to the intelligence tests resolving and I couldn’t even compare this interest of mine with no other at that particular time period.

And the question is quite simple, the characterization of this obsessed person’s psychological profile for that period. Passionated, empathic, maniac, unsocial, introverted, under-developed personality, off-balance, immature, strange, schizophrenic, sick, motivated, interested, capable and able, smart, having too much free time, having so few other original interests, having just a good time, selfish, narcissistic, self-oriented and self-centered, eccentric, dangerous …

Well, this article was not written to disclose the true, genuine reason that motivated me or even more to describe the exact personal point of view. It was a wondering of mine and I wanted to present some personal infos, ideas on the specific dilemma.