Therapeutic assessment is a psychological assessment procedure which aims to help people gain insight and apply this new insight to problems in their life. This paradigm is contrasted with the traditional, information-gathering model of psychological assessment, the main goal of which is to accurately diagnose, plan treatments, and evaluate treatment effectiveness. Traditional, information-gathering assessment is sometimes viewed as the phase before treatment, whereas therapeutic assessment can be considered the first phase of treatment or as a brief standalone treatment. The term 'Therapeutic Assessment' was coined in 1993 by Stephen E. Finn to describe the semi-structured collaborative assessment paradigm developed by himself and colleagues at the Center for Therapeutic Assessment in Austin, Texas. Finn suggests differentiating the capitalized "Therapeutic Assessment" or the abbreviation, "TA" as the paradigm developed by himself and his colleagues and the lowercase "therapeutic assessment" as the more general term which describes a variety of humanistically based assessment models.