Thematic Test Analysis

E. S. Shneidman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317844334
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 1988. This book is the result of the attempt to work up a single clinical case in terms of all the published methods for thematic test analysis and of the realization that no one can present a system of interpretation better than the person who designed it; thus the several thematic methods, each presented by its own author. The primary purpose has always been to furnish the interested reader with a comprehensive manual showing the various methods of thematic test analysis in operation on the same case.

Chapter 1

Introduction

THIS BOOK is about thematic test analysis; that is, it is concerned with the various approaches to the interpretation of picture-thematic projective personality test data.

Picture-thematic tests are those psychological techniques which have “at least two elements: pictorial materials with human figures which are presented to a subject for his response; and the analysis of the content of the responses for thematic meaningfulness” [51].¹ Two such tests are the focus for this book: the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the Make A Picture Story (MAPS) test. The major purpose of this volume is to present a bibliographic round table of several experts’ interpretations of the same individual’s test data, together with a set of historical and clinical data about this same individual—the latter not known to the test interpreters at the time they made their analyses.

I. Over-View

The pattern of this study of the various approaches to the analysis of thematic tests may be described as follows:

Copies of the same TAT protocol (reproduced in Chapter 2) and MAPS test protocol (Chapter 3) for one person, “John Doe,”² were distributed to thematic test experts. The criterion for selecting the psychologists and psychiatrists chosen was that they had published a method or technique for interpreting or analyzing the TAT. The only data given to these experts, in addition to the test responses, was the subject’s sex (male), his age (25), and his marital status (single).³ Each potential contributor was requested to analyze the TAT and MAPS test by his own method and to give it the “full treatment.” We indicated that we were interested primarily in the techniques and asked that each contributor return his working procedures such as work notes, step-by-step notations, work sheets, and tabulations, as well as his final write-up. We also asked each interpreter to indicate the extent to which he believed that his TAT method was applicable to the MAPS test and to make any comparisons between the two tests that he wished.

Fifteen TAT methodologists wrote sixteen interpretations of John Doe’s TAT and MAPS test protocols. These contributions were edited and appear as separate chapters in this book (Chapters 4 through 18; Chapter 16 contains two different methods: Helen Sargent’s Insight Test scoring method and Beverly Cox’s and Helen Sargent’s Normative scoring method). These fifteen chapters have been organized so that they consist of the following six sections: (a) selected references for the method under discussion; (b) a resume of the contributor’s method of analysis or interpretation; (c) the contributor’s “working notes” or working procedures or tabulations or preliminary drafts to his interpretation—the aspects of his modus operandi which precede the preparation of the final report and which are usually not presented as part of the report; (d) the contributor’s interpretation of John Doe’s TAT; (e) the contributor’s MAPS test working notes; and (f) the MAPS test interpretation.

The comments of the thematic test contributors relevant to their comparing the TAT and MAPS test were grouped together and organized and appear as a single chapter (Chapter 29).

The TAT interpretations, and the supplementary test interpretations and certain portions of the behavioral data (see below), were all reduced to discrete items of personality descriptions (e.g., the statement, “This individual is depressed, hostile, anxious, and fearful,” became four separate items). Approximately 1200 statements resulted from this process. Some syntheses were made from the items of personality description. These resulted in the formulation of generic types of thematic test analysis.⁴ It is proposed that all approaches to thematic test interpretation can be discussed in terms of their primary purposes, their essential elements which are analyzed, their working procedures, and their main emphases. These are discussed in Chapter 30.

In addition to the TAT and MAPS test, there were other test protocols available for this same subject. These tests are the Rorschach ink blots, the Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence scale, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Draw-A-Person, and the Bender-Gestalt figures. Each of these tests was interpreted by one expert in that particular test. These test protocols and interpretations are presented in Chapters 19 through 23.

We also had—unavailable to the contributors until publication in this volume—“behavioral data” for John Doe. These consist of some factual material about a real person whose test protocols are herein reproduced. This information consists of five segments: Chapter 24 is the abstract of John Doe’s case history prepared by the psychiatrist who was in charge of John Doe’s case when he was a patient in a Veterans Administration neuropsychiatric hospital; Chapter 25, “Course in Neuropsychiatric Hospital,” consists of verbatim notations of the ward physicians and consulting psychiatrists in relation to diagnosis, treatment, testing and disposition, which had been entered in John Doe’s hospital clinical folder; Chapter 26 presents excerpts from psychiatric interviews with John Doe while he was in the hospital, including some dream material; Chapter 27 presents (a) notes made by his psychiatric social worker therapist at the Veterans Administration mental hygiene clinic where John Doe went for out-patient treatment following his discharge from the hospital, and (b) a summary evaluation of John Doe’s personality and therapeutic problems made by this same therapist; and Chapter 28 presents a report by the chief psychiatrist at the same mental hygiene clinic of a psychiatric follow-up interview with John Doe conducted approximately two and one-half years after the dates on which he was administered the psychological tests at the neuropsychiatric hospital. It should be indicated that these behavioral data are not presented as validating criteria for the psychological tests, but rather as another set of observations on the same person.

II. Purposes

The purposes of this volume can now be stated. They are as follows:

1. To bring together, in relation to the same thematic test protocols, many of the published techniques for dealing with thematic tests. Thus the study aims to serve as a comprehensive manual or guide by describing each method of analysis and then presenting the originator’s own working procedures and interpretations of the same thematic test materials.

2. To indicate some of the major principles and important dimensions of thematic test interpretation.

3. To permit comparisons among the various thematic test interpretations, between thematic test interpretations and other test interpretations, and between thematic test interpretations and actual case history and psychotherapy data.

4. To demonstrate what areas or topics are mentioned in thematic test reports and to present data which indicate to what extent areas of personality discussed in thematic test interpretations are dependent upon the particular method of analysis or interpretation.

5. To cite the comparisons between the TAT and the MAPS test made by the thematic test experts and to indicate some of the implications of these comparisons.

6. To present a study in which the emphasis is on the prediction of behavior rather than the validation of a technique; i.e., to hold a “psychological autopsy” on one case.

7. To demonstrate the variety of possible approaches to the analysis of thematic test material and to illustrate the current and challenging nature of the entire area of projective testing and the great need for experimental researches with these promising techniques.

III. Limitations and Delimitations

There are a number of obvious and important limitations to this study. It is best that these shortcomings of the product be stated at this time so that the reader will not be disappointed by expecting more than he will find, and so that the authors will not be embarrassed by being expected to do more than the situation would permit. These may be set down as follows:

1. The methodologic setting within which the entire study was done constitutes a limitation upon the possible conclusions; i.e., this investigation is a research but not an experiment; it employed systematic observation rather than controlled observation; it focused attention on certain variables of the-matic test analysis, but it did not freeze or manipulate these variables as one does in a controlled experiment.

2. The entire research revolves around one case (John Doe). How any of the methods or procedures of test interpretation cited in relation to John Doe would have worked with other types of cases which might have been selected is not known. It may be that whatever conclusions are justified from the study of John Doe will have to be in terms of this one case. Another limitation within this sphere is the fact that there was no systematic inquiry into the reliabilities of the various scoring schemes. (Actually, we feel that the conclusions do have somewhat more general implications than those limited to this one case).

3. There are methodologic limitations to this research in terms of the relationships among the variables of the research. Two such can be cited, (a) A direct comparison between the results of the TAT and the results of the MAPS test is handicapped because of the lack of perfect experimental design in the administration of the two tests: they were administered by different examiners, they were given two months apart, and there were the intervening variables of unknown effect such as six insulin comas between the two administrations. However, inasmuch as this inter-test comparison was not central to this round-table study, this case was chosen because of its “typical” neuropsychiatric hospital nature and its potential clinical richness, and in spite of the limitation cited above, (b) The same sort of limitation applies to the role of the psychiatric follow-up interview, where there were known intervening variables of unknown effect (such as psychotherapy) between the testing and the follow-up two years later, and any number of unknown variables. Thus, the predictions made by the test interpreters, where they disagree with the known “facts” of the behavioral data, might have agreed with these data if the intervening factors (such as the psychotherapy) had not taken place.

4. different kind of limitation—one mentioned by several of the test contributors as being a limitation on their interpretative efforts—was the “blind analysis” task imposed upon the contributors. This refers to having the interpreters do their test analyses without any of John Doe’s case history material or personal data (except his sex, age and marital status). The reason for this procedure was simply that it was necessitated by the research design, and is quite apart from the controversy of whether test interpretations should be done with a minimum or a maximum of supplementary data. This book does not include the problem of the proper role of “blind analysis” in thematic test interpretation, nor its supplementary methodologic problem of the explanation of failures of thematic test interpretation to be consistent with clearly demonstrable clinical data—even assuming that this latter phenomenon occurred among any of the test interpreters represented in this volume.

5. There are two limitations to the scope of this effort, and they are similar to one another, (a) This study on thematic projective techniques is limited to the TAT and the MAPS test, and is concerned primarily with the TAT. It does not pretend to discuss systematically the entire field of thematic testing, nor does it cover such similar and related tests as van Lennep’s Four Picture Test, Rosenzweig’s Picture Frustration Study, and the many modifications of the TAT principle for special groups, (b) Not all the existing systems for TAT analysis and interpretation are represented. Of the thirty different methods reported in the psychological and psychiatric literature, sixteen are to be found in this volume. The reader should be aware of this limitation in the scope of the book, although the systems not represented do not, on the whole, differ remarkably in type from those which are included. (The more remarkable fact is in terms of the cooperation and willingness that was exhibited by many members of the psychological and psychiatric professions).

6. limitation in the scope of this volume, that of not including a statistical analysis of the interpretations, may be a disappointment for some readers. Statistical treatment of the data, as already stated, is being planned for separate publication. The nature of these statistical procedures is given in Chapter 30, footnote 4, page 303.

The statement of all these limitations and delimitations serves to reenforce the primary purpose of this volume, which is to present data—first the test records of an individual, then the several interpretations of that individual’s test records, and finally some case history and psychotherapy information about that individual. The purpose is simply to present these data and let the reader do with them essentially what he will.

IV. Rationale

This project was done within the framework of the desire to contribute to psychology and psychodiagnostics as predictive sciences. The point of view is propounded that interpretation of psychological test material usually includes or implies prediction of the subject’s future behavior as well as description of the present personality of the subject. One can go so far as to say that prediction of overt behavior from test material responses (test productions are themselves a form of behavior at the fantasy level) is one of the primary purposes of test interpretation in the clinical setting. The interpretations included in this book made by the several experts of the same set of test protocols are implied predictions; e.g., the statement, “The subject is homicidal,” is certainly a prediction that the subject may attempt murder. There are in this volume psychiatric follow-up data, which means that the predictions implied in the interpretations of the TAT and the MAPS test records can be compared in two ways: (1) with behavioral data contemporary with the test records which are also presented (su...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Part I. Thematic Test Data
• Part II. Techniques of Thematic Test Analysis
• Part III. Additional Test Data
• Part IV. Behavioral Data
• Part V. Synthesis and Summary
• Bibliography
• Index