Читать книгу Abnormal Psychology - William J. Ray - Страница 172

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is composed of 30 black-and-white drawings of various scenes and people (see Figure 4.4 for an example). The instrument was developed by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray in the 1930s. Typically, an individual is shown 20 of the cards, one at a time, and asked to create a story about what is being depicted on the card. The basic idea is that by noting the content and emotionality of the individual’s responses, it is possible to gain insight into his or her thoughts, emotions, and motivations including areas of conflict. For example, if an individual described many of the cards in terms of someone leaving another person, the clinician might ask if abandonment was an important issue for the person. Although the TAT technique may be useful to gain additional information concerning a person such as suicidal thoughts, it lacks scientific evidence to make it useful in obtaining a formal diagnosis. Similar problems of reliability and validity exist with the TAT as with the Rorschach.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): a projective testing instrument composed of black-and-white drawings of various scenes and people; by evaluating the individual’s interpretive responses to the ambiguous drawings, it is possible to gain insight into his or her thoughts, emotions, and motivations including areas of conflict

Overall, projective techniques have been the subject of great debate and controversy. P. Frick, Barry, and Kamphaus (2010) presented some of the major pros and cons concerning the use of projective techniques (see Table 4.1). Some professionals see their value not in terms of giving exact diagnoses but in their ability to allow a professional to see how an individual responds to ambiguous stimuli—especially in terms of suicidal ideation as well as disorganized thought processes. This may lead to further discussions of areas that a professional would not normally discuss. The major disadvantage of projective techniques centers on questions of validity in terms of both the test’s ability to identify specific disorders and the reliance of the test interpretation on a specific population such as children.