AIM This chapter looks at a variety of areas that reflect normal positive functioning. The chapter is not intended to be a comprehensive review of normality; it covers a small number of selected areas chosen either because of their importance in psychological testing, or because of some illustrative innovative aspect, and perhaps because of our feeling that some of these areas, although important, are often neglected by instructors. Much of psychological testing has developed within a clinical tradition, with the emphasis on psychopathology. As we saw in Chapter 7, psychologists have developed some fairly sophisticated measures of psychopathology; even intelligence testing covered in Chapter 5, developed originally within the context of assessing retarded children. The assessment of normality has in many ways been neglected, primarily because assessment occurs where there is a need – and the need to “measure” what is normal has not, in the past, been very strong. Keep in mind also that the dividing line between normality and abnormality is not absolute, and so tests of psychopathology such as the MMPI can also be used with presumably mentally healthy college students.