Overall Measures of Self-Actualization Derived From the Personal Orientation Inventory

THE Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) was designed by Everett L. Shostrom (1964, 1966) as a group test for measuring self-actualization. Its validity is based primarily upon clinically judged self-actualized vs. non-self-actualized subjects (Shostrom, 1966). Other studies report the test’s ability to differentiate be-tween such things as pre- and post-sensitivity training (Shostrom, 1964), stages of psychotherapy involvement (Shostrom and Knapp, 1966), levels of performance on a neuroticism inventory (Knapp, 1965), and achieving vs. underachieving college freshmen (LeMay and Damm, 1968). The test consists of 150 two-choice (paired opposites) compara-tive value judgments which can be broken down into the following