Psych tests are debunked.  See Scientific American, May 2001.

Psychological testing alone does not diagnose sexual abuse either in the victim, but it is helpful as part of the evaluation of the alleged sexual offender.  And in cases of possible false allegations, it may be helpful to have testing of both parents.  Testing both parents is not only fair, it also makes eminent common sense.

The battery of psychological tests would likely include the Rorschach Inkblot test, TAT (Thematic Apperception Test), and MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory).   A penile plethysmograph, which measures sexual arousal in certain contexts, may also be administered.

Testing of the victim may be indicated if there are questions about intelligence or thought processes.  The same be true for either or both of the parents.

Rorschach, TAT, and MMPI

Rorschach Inkblots, in use for some seventy years now, make up the standard set of ten inkblot pictures.

The TAT, Thematic Apperception Test, is a series of pictures of people.  The pictures include anything from a single solitary young man looking down and studying what's typically seen as a violin before him, to a man with his eyes covered, shielded, standing in front of what appears to be a nude, partially clothed woman lying on a bed.

The person being tested is asked to tell a story about people: to describe the scene that was in the picture, the person's feelings, the person's thoughts at that moment, and then tell not only what might have led up to the scene in the picture but also what the outcome was going to be.

The primary value of both the Rorschach and the TAT is in assessing the personality of the person who's taking the test, the ease with which he can use his imagination.

For instance, when you show somebody an inkblot test and they don't have any outside cues as to what is an appropriate response, they tend to rely on their own internal mechanisms, their own internal preoccupations, and their own personality pattern to respond to it.

Somebody can try to affect the outcome of a Rorschach test by giving as constricted, as limited, a record as possible . . . and respondiing with only one or two responses per card.  It is known, however, how many responses to expect from those being tested.  For instance, an average number of responses for somebody of above average intelligence would be on the order of two or three responses per card.

The responses themselves can be scored.  There are normative tables, again, based on thousands of Rorschachs that have been administered to clinical and normal populations.  Using those data -- how many normal people, as opposed to how many disturbed people, saw what was on a particular card -- the quality of each response can be judged.

Using those criteria, a person's responses can be determined to be appropriate and in agreement with what most other people see.  The tester can judge:

 whether the person made good use of the stimulus material
 whether he has a good imagination
 whether he is in good contact with reality
 whether there is a sign of any potential loss of reality sense
 whether there is evidence of any underlying mental illness
 whether there is any sexual preoccupation
 whether there are any aggressively tinged responses
 whether there is any suggestion of any tendency for any 
          precipitous failures in reality testing
 whether there is an odd response that appears out of nowhere
          and that is pathological

Also likely to be included as part of the psychological test battery is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2, the most recent version).  This is a set of 566 true/false questions that the person has to answer alone.  His responses, his test profile, are then analyzed by computer and compared with the responses of various known clinical and nonclinical groups.