Art and Projective Methods

Art seems to have a close relationship with projective methods. I recently discovered that card 10 of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which depicts a road and a bridge with the head of a dragon looking down stems from a painting of the Swiss artist, Arnold Böcklin (1827 – 1901). The choice of the Teufelsbrücke¹, ² (the bridge of the devil) in the Canton of Uri in Switzerland for his painting has its origin in his attempt to reject realism and create mythological and symbolic work, therefore allowing a more ambiguous representation. This is indeed familiar to us, as projective methods aim to use ambiguity to access the subject’s unconscious processes. There is a close relation between visual arts and the field of projective methods. After all, Hermann Rorschach’s passion for art undoubtedly influenced the development of the Inkblot Test. In fact, many of the TAT cards have been inspired by existing paintings (Morgan, 1995).

Thus, the special section of this volume, edited by Professor Sharon Rae Jenkins, of Rorschachiana is dedicated to the TAT. It felt important that our journal presents some of the current clinical and research work on the TAT, which remains among one of the most used psychological tools by psychologists around the world. It has also inspired the development of other storytelling techniques such as the Children Apperception Test (Bellak & Abrams, 1948), the Blacky Picture Test (Blum, 1950), or the Object Relation Technique (Phillipson, 1955), to name a few. These materials are thought to provide more structure to the subject and have historically been considered as complementary to the Rorschach test. The special section aims to highlight the importance of storytelling techniques in the field of projective methods and hopefully encourages other clinicians and academics to submit their work to Rorschachiana.

The general section of this volume contains four original articles on various current topics. Handelzalts and Ben-Artzy-Cohen have conducted a research on the Draw-A-Person test (DAP) and body image. They are interested in the debate about the validity of the DAP. They found a significant correlation between the size of the body drawn and a self-report measuring body image, and advocate for more validity research on the DAP as they believe it remains a useful clinical tool. Schwartz and Canetti explore the correlation between creativity and a selected number of Rorschach variables of the Comprehensive System. They found some interesting correlations and suggest that further research could lead to the development of a Rorschach creativity index. Cariola’s study aims to assess the alternate form reliability of lexical frequencies between interview-based and web-based Rorschach responses using the Body Type Dictionary, a measure based on Fisher and Cleveland’s scoring system of body boundary imagery (Fisher & Cleveland, 1956, 1958). The author discusses the advantages and also limitations of web-based Rorschach administration. Brainard, Viglione, and Wilke use the Rorschach test to compare learning-disabled to non learning-disabled children to find out if their information processing differs. Their results indicate that learning-disabled children tend to process stimuli in a less mature and more simplistic way. They highlight a series of variables that differentiate the two groups. The authors discuss the clinical implications of their study for learning-disabled children.