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Psychoanalysis and projective methods in personality assessment : the French school
\"Unique synthesis from the French School of psychoanalytical projective methods. This unique book synthesizes the work of leading thinkers of the French School of psychoanalytical projective methods in personality assessment. The French School is a direct successor to Rorschach's and Murray's original approaches using the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Underlying this method is the idea of the coexistence of conscious and unconscious processes, of opposite instinctual pairs, and of agents that are ruled by conflicts (Freud). Transitional activity is seen as part of an intermediate space, a mediator space, and bearer of messages between the subject and the clinician (Winnicott). This book brings to life the important contributions of the French School, firstly exploring its theories and methods and then its clinical applications. Detailed case studies from different stages of life examine the psychopathology of everyday life with its severe and disabling states of suffering. Contemporary advances in research and clinical work are presented, and the groundbreaking early work of Nina Rausch de Traubenberg, Vica Shentoub, and Rosine Debray are also critically reread and discussed. Clinical tools adapted for clinicians and researchers in the appendices include a useful schema to facilitate the interpretation of the Rorschach and TAT together, a list of latent solicitations for the TAT, and the current version of the TAT Scoring Grid. This book is essential reading for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, researchers, and students interested in applying psychoanalytical theory to projective methods.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Essentials of TAT and other storytelling assessments
Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret a variety of storytelling techniques Storytelling techniques are a popular projective approach for assessing many aspects of a person's personality, such as cognitive processes, emotional functioning, and self-regulation.
eBook
Assessment of psychological defense mechanisms in women with somatoform disorder using Thematic Apperception Test-Based Measure
IntroductionMaladaptive defense mechanisms can play a role in maintaining the inadequate social and psychological adaptation of patients.ObjectivesThis study aims to establish if denial is one of the central psychological defense mechanisms in patients with somatoform disorder.Methods10 female patients at Moscow Clinical hospital №33 with somatoform disorder and panic attacks (aged 20 to 43) and 20 female participants of the control group (aged 19 to 35) were presented with 10 pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test. Pictures were previously annotated into 4 groups: neutral stimuli (2, 6GF), provoking self-blame / depression ideation stimuli (3GF,14, 15, 17GF), provoking aggression ideation stimuli (8ВМ, 18 GF, 9GF), provoking aggression/self-blame ideation stimuli (13 MF). We conducted content analyses of stories. Mann-Whitney U-test was used.ResultsTable 1 presents analyses categories, examples of stories, and group differences.Table 1CategoryExamplePatients,% of storiesControl group,% of storiesMann-Whitney U-testDenial of interpersonal/internal conflict«It is a beautiful day. The girl is enjoying the sunlight. Her life is going well» (17GF).90%47%*р<0,01Denial of aggressive ideation«She won`t smother her, she just wants to scare her a little» (18 GF).70%30%р<0,05Denial of depressive /self-blame ideation«Is she dead or not? I think, no. They were having sex and now they are sleepy» (13MF).* Several patients told more than 1 story to a picture.ConclusionsPatients with the somatoform disorder tended to use descriptions without interpersonal or internal conflicts and/or to deny any characters‘ negative intentions or the negative consequences of their actions.DisclosureNo significant relationships.
Journal Article
Imaginative elaboration in agenesis of the corpus callosum: topic modeling and perplexity
Previous studies have found deficits in imaginative elaboration and social inference to be associated with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC; Renteria-Vasquez et al., 2022; Turk et al., 2009). In the current study, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses from a neurotypical control group and a group of individuals with ACC were used to further study the capacity for imaginative elaboration and story coherence.
Topic modeling was employed utilizing Latent Diritchlet Allocation to characterize the narrative responses to the pictures used in the TAT. A measure of the difference between models (perplexity) was used to compare the topics of the responses of individual participants to the common core model derived from the responses of the control group. Story coherence was tested using sentence-to-sentence Latent Semantic Analysis.
Group differences in perplexity were statistically significant overall, and for each card individually (
< .001). There were no differences between the groups in story coherence.
TAT narratives from persons with ACC were normally coherent, but more conventional (i.e., more similar to the core text) compared to those of neurotypical controls. Individuals with ACC can make conventional social inferences about socially ambiguous stimuli, but are restricted in their imaginative elaborations, resulting in less topical variability (lower perplexity values) compared to neurotypical controls.
Journal Article
Genre variety as indicator of creativity in TAT stories of musicians and visual artists
Objectives. The goal of this qualitative study is to show the latent potential of Thematic-Apperception Test in the context of creativity research. The secondary objective is to capture possible differences in the area of creativity and personality of various groups of artists. Sample and settings. The target group was various artists. Thirty artists were divided into three groups according to the type of art and educational attainment. The first group consists of musicians with formal musical education, the second one consists of self-taught musicians and the third group is the most diverse, created by various visual artists. All the members of the third group also have formal education in their field. Analysis. The starting point of this qualitative oriented research is 300 stories created on the basis of TAT, which was openly presented to the participants as a creativity test. Their stories were then further explored to capture and identify characteristics that may indicate the author's creativity. One manifestation was the variety of genres used by the narrator in a single TAT protocol. Genre analysis of the stories revealed differences in their occurrence among the groups. Results. Visual artists more often created abstract narratives, frequently extending far into the realm of bizarreness. It also seems that autodidact musicians tend to create tragedy-oriented stories and lean towards positive genres only rarely. Limitations. The selection of participants did not avoid certain weaknesses. Part of the sample is made up of participants whom we know in person and only during the collection of data we switched to the snowball sampling. The entire research group is also made up of Slovak artists, so all the stories were created in the Slovak language. Many language-specific metaphorical expressions and linguistic nuances related to creativity which are unique to each language thus would be lost in translation.
Journal Article
Projective in Time: A Systematic Review on the Use of Construction Projective Techniques in the Digital Era—Beyond Inkblots
Background: Projective instruments have historically been used to explore unconscious dynamics and personality traits in children and adolescents. However, concerns about their psychometric properties have led to ongoing debates in clinical psychology. This review aims to critically reassess the use of construction projective techniques in clinical settings for individuals aged 4 to 18 years, also examining the available psychometric data reported in recent scientific literature, excluding the Rorschach Test due to its extensive coverage in existing literature. Methods: A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP), and the Cochrane Library were searched for studies published between 2010 and 2024. Inclusion criteria encompassed studies focusing on construction projective techniques administered to clinical and non-clinical samples aged 4 to 18 years. Results: From an initial pool of 641 articles, 25 met the inclusion criteria. These studies indicate that construction projective techniques remain valuable in accessing children’s and adolescents’ inner worlds, particularly in diagnostic and therapeutic contexts. However, 13 of the 25 analyzed studies lack detailed psychometric evaluations, and the overall methodological quality was medium-low (4.4/9). Recent adaptations of these techniques show promise in increasing their applicability and relevance. Conclusions: Constructive projective tests continue to offer unique insights into the psychological functioning of young individuals. While not definitive diagnostic tools, they serve as effective supplements in clinical assessments and therapeutic interventions when applied with awareness of their limitations.
Journal Article
The Implicit Achievement Motive in the Writing Style
Linguistic theories and research indicate that unconscious processes should influence the content, but moreover also the way how things are expressed. As the first is well researched and the second is almost neglected, I want to assess how the writing style of a person is related to the implicit achievement motive and its two components hope of success (HS) and fear of failure (FF). Therefore, thematic apperception test/picture story exercise responses of 2942 persons were analyzed regarding the three writing style features (1) syntax, (2) nominal/verbal writing, and (3) function words. According to the assumptions, the results of two independent measures (Stanford Parser and LIWC) show that a verbal fluent writing style with simple syntax is associated with HS, whereby FF-motivated people show nominal writing with interjections, conjunctions, and complex punctuations.
Journal Article
Processing of emotionally ambiguous stimuli in eating disorders: an fMRI pilot study
Purpose
People with eating disorders (EDs) have difficulties understanding their own emotions and recognizing the emotions of others, especially in ambiguous settings. We examined the neuronal mechanisms underlying the emotion processing of ambiguous interpersonal stimuli in EDs and healthy controls (HCs).
Methods
The fMRI data were acquired by a blocked experimental design with 28 women (14 EDs) during the visual presentation of a modified Thematic Apperception Test.
Results
EDs showed very strong associations between experienced and inferred emotions evoked by the stimuli; no such relationship was found in HCs. HCs displayed elevated left anterior insula activity during the mentalizing condition; EDs showed increased activity in the right supramarginal gyrus and medial prefrontal cortex.
Conclusion
The two groups seem to apply different strategies for judging emotionally ambiguous stimuli, albeit resulting in equivalent judgments. We assume that activity in the supramarginal gyrus and insula in EDs is linked with suppressing their own perspective while considering emotional states, probably due to alexithymia and the lack of awareness of their own mental states. We hypothesize that the strong correlation between experienced and inferred emotions in EDs could reflect their tendency to use others as a reference point for perceiving themselves and gaining information about their affective state.
Level of evidence
No level of evidence, this is a basic science study.
Journal Article
Depression is associated with negativity in TAT narratives: The mediating role of agency
Although it is well established that depressed individuals have a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli in a negative manner, previous studies have rarely applied narrative analysis to investigate this relation. Our purpose for the present study was to extend the literature by examining whether individuals with depressive symptoms generate negatively distorted narratives when taking the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). We focused on emotional tone and agentic theme in fictional narratives to investigate (1) whether depression is related to the emotional tone of the narrative, and (2) whether agency emerging in narratives mediates the relation between depression and emotional tone. Participants wrote fictional stories in response to three different TAT cards. Two independent sets of three coders coded narratives for emotional tone and agentic theme, respectively. As expected, depression was positively related to the negative emotional tone, and this relation was mediated by the lack of agentic themes in the narratives.
Journal Article
Detecting dynamics of action in text with a recurrent neural network
According to the dynamics of action (DoA)-theory, action is an interplay of instigating and consummatory forces over time. The TAT/PSE—a psychological test instrument—should measure this dynamics. Therefore, people get presented different pictures with the instruction to invent stories. In those stories, the periodical tendencies should be visible, but this could not be shown yet. I reanalyzed two datasets regarding category IS: They were coded by a human expert, a recurrent neural network (RNN), and a convolutional neural network (CNN). It is visible that in Heckhausen's origin data category IS produces saw-tooth related curves in the stories across the pictures and that this could potentially better be detected by the RNN than by the CNN or the human coder. Second, I reanalyzed a study that experimentally assessed the DoA with a picture x position effect and rejected it. Here again, only the RNN coded IS-score produces a statistical significant picture x position effect. This shows that because of its sequential structure the RNN detects different phrases in the text that are barely capable by human coder or other neural networks but are related to motive theories.
Journal Article