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Thematic Apperception Test

History and Development

  • First conceptualized by Henry Murray, Christiana Morgan, and their colleagues at the Harvard Psychological Clinic in 1935 but was more fully elaborated in 1938 and 1943.

  • The basic idea of TAT came from Murray's student, asked him if pictures could be used to explore the underlying dynamics of personality.

  • This test produced numerous variations. Children Apperception test is the most common.

Reliability and Validity

INTERPRETATION

  • Internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and test-retest reliability are low.

  • The validity is low. Proponents of the test describe “impressive” and “strong” relationships, whereas critics have said that validity is “almost nonexistent.”
  • When the scoring has been completed, it should be relatively easy to convert this information into a coherent description of the person. The scoring and interpretation can even be considered the same task.

Bellak and Abrams suggested 3 major levels of interpretation;

a. Descriptive - Merely a short repeat of the story

b. Interpretive - Extends the descriptive level beginning with “If one . . . [does X, then the outcome will be Y].”

c. Diagnostic - A further extension in that an inference is made about the client.

It is possible for a report to be organized around the information noted on the 10 different scoring categories.

1. Unconscious structure and needs: Derived from categories 1 through 3.

2. Conception of the world and perceptions of significant persons: Derived from categories 4 and 5.

3. Relevant dimensions of personality: Derived from categories 6 through 10.

Further ratings can be noted for levels of intelligence and maturational level.

What is TAT?

Theoretical Perspectives

1. Main Theme

Restate the essential elements of the story. It should be as brief as possible and should aim to extract the essence of what has been described.

2. Main Hero/Heroine

The hero/heroine is usually the person who is most frequently referred to in the story.

3. Main Needs and Drives of the Heroine

  • The behavioral needs to be rated in the story refer to the most basic needs expressed in the client’s story productions.
  • Clinicians should also note any figures, objects, or circumstances that are introduced as well as any that have been omitted but perhaps should have been included.

12. Synthetic-Integrative Functioning

Clinicians must rate the client’s ability to actively reconcile difficult needs and conflicts.

13.Mastery-Competency

This final category requires a rating of the client’s overall sense of competency, especially as it relates to the outcome of different story themes.

6. Significant Conflicts

The major conflicts within the hero/heroine should be noted by reviewing the client’s current feelings and behaviors and assessing how congruent these are.

7. Nature of Anxieties

In addition to significant conflicts, clinicians should rate the nature and strength (✓, ✓✓, ✓✓✓) of the hero/heroine’s anxieties in terms of fear of physical harm and/or punishment, disapproval, lack or loss of love, illness or injury, being deserted, deprived, overpowered and helpless, devoured, or other.

10. Stimulus Barrier

The client’s stimulus barrier refers to how reactive a person is to various events (high/ low threshold). How does the person reacts to critcisms, or unpleaseant situations?

11. Autonomous Functioning

To what extent is the client disrupted by certain ideas, feelings, conflicts, or impulses?

10. Integration of the Ego

In general, the degree of ego integration is indicated by the quality with which the hero/heroine mediates between different conflicts. Specific observations can be made regarding the adequacy, quality, effectiveness, flexibility, and style of problem solving.

Categories of TAT Analysis Sheet

8. ARISE (Adaptive Regression in the Service of the Ego)

Can the client temporarily lower his or her defenses to increase awareness and help with problem solving? This would allow for a relatively free expression of primary process thinking in which the client can approach self and others from different perspectives.

9. Defensive Functioning

This category requires the clinician to rate the extent to which clients’ defenses protect them from internal anxiety-provoking impulses and conflicts.

Ego Functions

5. Object Relations

Extent of the client's relationships to others. How long it is and its overall quality. How mature is the client and how free from maladaptive interpersonal patterns?

6. Thought Processes

This category requires a rating of the general adequacy and coherence of the client’s thought processes. Thus, careful attention should be given to the level of attention, concentration, memory, verbal ability, and abstract reasoning.

8. Main Defenses against Conflicts and Fears

  • The clinician is asked to rate the presence and strength of defenses against anxieties and conflicts.
  • The strength of the defenses can be assessed by noting their frequency both within each story and among the different stories.

9. Adequacy of Superego as Manifested by “Punishment ” for “Crime”

  • Clinicians are requested to rate the relative degree of appropriateness, severity, consistency, and extent of delay of any consequences for potentially punishable behavior.
  • Particular note should be made of the relative strength and type of punishment compared to the seriousness of the “crime.”

3. Sense of Reality of the World and of the Self

Here, the clinician rates disturbances in the client’s sense of self, such as dissociative experiences, depersonalization, and dejà vu. These also relate to feelings of reality or unreality in the client’s perceptions of the environment.

4. Regulation and Control of Drives, Affects, and Impulses

How direct or indirect is the client’s expression of impulses? Can they be appropriately and effectively controlled and delayed? How high a tolerance is there for frustration? Is the client undercontrolled or overcontrolled? Can he or she monitor drives and express them in a modified and adaptive manner?

4. Conception of the Environment (World)

Summarize the most important and strongest conceptions of the person’s environment. Note the number and strength of descriptive words such as hostile, dangerous, or nurturing.

5. Figures seen as...

  • One of the cornerstones of TAT interpretation is understanding how the client views other persons, as represented in the story productions.
  • This category attempts to elaborate on this by rating the hero/heroine’s attitudes and behaviors toward parental, contemporary (age-related peers), and junior figures.

1. Reality Testing

  • This variable rates the extent to which the client accurately perceives and relates to his or her external environment.
  • Assessed by noting the extent to which the client can articulate needs, feelings, values, and beliefs. Also included would be accuracy in perceiving time and place.

2. Judgement

What is the client’s capacity for understanding a situation, particularly where interpersonal relationships are involved, and translating this understanding into an effective, coherent response?

1–3. Unconscious structure and drives of the subject (derived from scoring categories

1–3: Main Themes, Main Hero, and Main Needs and Drives of Hero).

4. Conception of world.

5. Relationship to others.

6. Significant conflicts.

7. Nature of anxieties.

8. Main defenses used.

9. Superego structure.

10. Integration and strength of ego.

Bellak TAT and CAT Analysis sheet

Scoring Procedure

Using the long form of the scoring system, each one of the cards/stories is scored on a single Analysis Sheet.

The overall story themes and contents can then be analyzed by noting the common themes and unique features throughout the different sheets.

Bellak TAT and CAT Analysis sheet.

  • It is a projective technique consisting of a series of pictures.
  • The examinee is requested to create a story about what he or she believes is occuring in the situations or events depicted by the pictures.

  • Apperception - refer to the process of projecting fantasy imaginary onto an objective stimuli.

  • It was developed based on Murray's concepts of personality.
  • Needs-press Theory

a. Needs - "potentiality or readiness to respond in a certain way under certain given circumstances"

b. Press - environmental forces

  • Psychoanalytic, object relations, and theories of understanding narratives have also had a significant influence on conceptualizing,

scoring, and interpreting the TAT.

Bellak’s approach;

1. Analysis Sheet - 1 sheet for each cards/stories, it provides a guide and a frame of reference for TAT analysis that can be used later to organize and generate hypotheses about the person.

2. Ego Function Assessment from TAT data - to rate the person's ego functions.

Scoring procedure

Administration

Picture 5

Description of the card:

A woman is looking into a room from the threshold of a door.

Frequent plots:

A mother has caught her child misbehaving or surprised by an intruder entering the house.

General discussion:

Reveals information regarding subject's mother, elicits voyeuristic themes, paranoid fears of attack or intrusion by an outsider

Picture 5

Description of the card:

A woman is standing next to an open door with one hand grabbing the side of the door and the other holding her downcast face.

Frequent plots:

Interpersonal loss, guilt over past behavior

General discussion:

Tend to bring out depressive feelings, tend to bring out richer stories.

Picture 3GF

Picture 4

Picture 3GF

Description of the Card:

A woman is grabbing the shoulders of a man who is turning away from her.

Frequent plots: Woman as the advice-giving agent with the more impulsive and irrational man.

General discussions: Feelings and attitudes in male-female relationships, triangular jealousy

Picture 4

Description of Card:

A boy is huddled next to a couch. On the floor next to him is an ambiguous object that could be a set of keys or a revolver.

Frequent plots:

An individual who has been emotionally involved, feeling guilty over some past behavior, or a drug addict.

General Discussions:

it concerns themes of guilt, depression, aggression, and impulse control.

attitudes towards isolated self

Picture 3 BM

Picture 3BM

Picture 2

Description of the card:

Country scene with a woman holding a book in the foreground. In the background, a man is working a field while a woman watches.

Frequent plots:

Young girl leaving to seek opportunities, Hardworking family

General Discussion:

Talks about family relations

How the individual deals with the challenge of people living together.

Competition by the younger sibling for attention

parent-child and heterosexual relationships

Picture 2

Description of the card:

A boy is sitting at a table looking at a violin placed on the table in front of him.

Frequent plots:

A self-motivated boy or a rebellious boy.

General discussion:

issue of impulse versus control

personal demands versus the external controlling agents

relationship with one's parents

information regarding the need for achievement

Picture 1

Picture 1

Administration

Standard Sequence of Cards

  • Both females and males: 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6BM, 7GF, 8BM, 9GF, 10, and 13MF.
  • Male: 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6BM, 7BM, 11, 12M, and 13MF.
  • Female: 1, 2, 3, 3BM, 4, 6GF, 7GF, 9GF, 11, and 13MF.

  • Keiser and Prather (1990)10 most frequent cards - 1, 2, 3BM, 3GF, 4, 5, 6BM, 6GF, 8BM, and 8GF.

  • Murray's original instruction

"This is a test of imagination, one form of intelligence. I am going to show you some pictures, one at a time; and your task will be to make up as dramatic a story as you can for each. Tell what has led up to the event shown in the picture, describe what is happening at the moment, what the characters are feeling and thinking; and then give the outcome. Speak your thoughts as they come to your mind. Do you understand? Since you have fifty minutes for ten pictures, you can devote about five minutes to each story. Here is the first picture. (p. 3)"

Instruction of the Test

  • Setting - to be administered in an interpersonal setting
  • The materials consist of 20 cards on which ambiguous pictures are printed.

The back of each card is coded with a number and/or letters

- M or F, Male or Female

- B or G, Boy or Girl

- BM or GF, Boy/Male or Girl/Female

The TAT Cards

For children and people with mental illness.

This is a story-telling test. I have some pictures here that I am going to show you, and for each picture I want you to make up a story. Tell what is happening before and what is happening now. Say what the people are feeling and thinking and how it will come out. You can make up any story you please. Do you understand? Well, then, here is the first picture. You have five minutes to make up a story. See how well you can do. (pp. 3–4)

Instruction of the Test

Description of Card:

A hazy, nighttime picture of a man leaning against a lamppost.

Frequent Plots:

Stories range from the benign theme of a late evening date to more sinister circumstances, perhaps involving a gangster who is in imminent danger.

General Discussion:

The picture often elicits information regarding a subject’s attitude toward loneliness, darkness, and uncertainty. Fears may be stated explicitly through gangster stories.

Picture 20

Picture 20

Story Structure

4 requirements of the story structure;

1. Current situation.

2. Thoughts and feelings of the characters.

3. Preceding events.

4. Outcome.

Description of Card:

A surreal depiction of clouds and a home covered with snow.

Frequent Plots:

Stories are highly varied because of the unstructured and ambiguous nature of the stimuli.

General Discussion:

For certain subjects, the ambiguous nature of this picture can create anxiety and insecurity.

Picture 19

Picture 19

Description of Card:

A woman has her hands around the throat of another

woman. In the background is a flight of stairs.

Frequent Plots:

Aggressive mother-daughter interactions or sibling relationships are often disclosed in response to this picture.

General Discussion:

The manner in which the subject handles aggressive, hostile relationships with other women is the primary type of information this picture

elicits.

Picture 18GF

Picture GF

Picture 18 BM

Description of Card:

A man dressed in a long coat is being grabbed from behind. Three hands are visible.

Frequent Plots:

Typical themes involve either drunkenness on the part of the figure who is being supported by the three hands, or stories in which he is being attacked from behind.

General Discussion:

This picture, more than any of the others, is likely to produce anxiety because of the suggestive depiction of invisible forces attacking the figure.

Thus, it is important to note how the subject handles his or her own anxiety, as well as how the story character deals with his situation.

Picture 18BM

Description of Card:

A female is standing on a bridge over water. Above the bridge is a tall building, and behind the building the sun is shining from behind clouds.

Frequent Plots:

A great variety of stories are elicited, although themes surrounding departure and social or emotional distance do occur with some frequency.

General Discussion:

  • Attitudes toward a recent separation or the impending arrival of a loved one are sometimes described.
  • This card can be particularly useful in cases of suicidal depression, where the figure on the bridge is perceived as contemplating jumping off, as a last attempt to resolve her difficulties.
  • Personal reactions to, and internal dialogue involving, life stresses can also be extremely informative.

Picture 17GF

Picture 17 GF

Picture 17 BM

Description of Card:

A naked man is climbing up (or down) a rope.

Frequent Plots:

Stories usually involve someone escaping from a dangerous situation or an athletic event of a competitive nature.

General Discussion:

  • Because the card depicts a naked man, attitudes regarding the subject’s personal body images are often revealed.
  • Possible homosexual feelings or anxiety related to homosexuality also becomes evident in the stories of some subjects.

Picture 17BM

Picture 12 M

Picture 12M

Description of Card:

A man with his hand raised is standing above a boy who is lying on a bed with his eyes closed.

Frequent Plots:

Stories center on illness and/or the older man’s use of hypnosis or some form of religious rite on the younger, reclining figure.

General Discussion:

  • The picture often elicits themes regarding the relationship between an older (usually more authoritative) man and a younger one.
  • This can be significant in predicting or assessing the current or future relationship between the therapist and the client.

Picture 13B

Description of Card:

A boy is sitting in the doorway of a log cabin.

Frequent Plots:

Themes of loneliness and stories of childhood are often elicited. However, because the stimulus is somewhat vague, the content and the nature of these stories tend to be extremely varied.

General Discussion:

This picture may help both adults and children to reveal attitudes toward introspection or loneliness. In adults, it frequently elicits reveries involving childhood memories.

Picture 13 B

Picture 13 G

Picture 13G

Description of Card:

A girl is climbing a flight of stairs.

Frequent Plots:

The plots are similar to Picture 13B, usually involving themes of loneliness and/or distant childhood memories.

General Discussion:

Like Picture 13B, it can sometimes be useful in depicting a subject’s attitude toward loneliness and introspection.

Picture 13MF

Description of Card:

A young man is standing in the foreground with his head in his arms. In the background is a woman lying in a bed.

Frequent Plots:

  • The most frequent plot centers on guilt induced by illicit sexual activity.
  • Themes involving the death of the woman on the bed and the resulting grief of the man, who is often depicted as her husband, are somewhat less frequent.

General Discussion

  • This picture is often considered to be helpful in revealing sexual conflicts. In a general way, it provides information on a subject’s attitudes and feelings toward his or her partner, particularly attitudes just before and immediately following sexual intercourse.
  • Obsessive-compulsive personalities frequently spend an excessive amount of time describing and explaining these details.

Picture 13 MF

Picture 14

Picture 14

Description of Card:

A person is silhouetted against a window.

Frequent Plots:

This card produces themes of contemplation, wish fulfillment, or depression, or feelings related to burglary.

General Discussion:

  • If a subject’s presenting problem is depression, especially if there is evidence of suicidal ideation, this card, along with Picture 3BM, is essential.
  • This type of subject often describes the figure in the picture and, more importantly, discusses the events, feelings, and attitudes that led up to the current self-destructive behavior.
  • This picture may also reveal the subject’s aesthetic interests and personal philosophical beliefs or wish fulfillments.

Picture 15

Description of Card:

A man is standing among tombstones with his hands clasped together.

Frequent Plots:

Themes usually revolve around beliefs or events surrounding death and a hereafter.

General Discussion:

Stories from Picture 15 reflect the subject’s particular beliefs about, and attitudes toward, death and the dying process.

Picture 15

Picture 16

Description of Card:

A woman is sitting on a chair staring into space with her chin resting in her hand.

Frequent Plots:

Because this picture is vague and nonspecific, extremely diverse plots are developed and there are no frequently encountered themes.

General Discussion:

This picture is difficult to generalize about. Typically, it produces somewhat shallow stories of a contemplative nature.

Description of Card:

Blank card.

Frequent Plots:

Stories from this card are highly varied. It frequently elicits narratives related to a person’s life (current marital, family, and personal situation) and, to a lesser extent, idyllic, defensive, catastrophic, and achievement-oriented concerns.

General Discussion.

Instructions for this card are: Imagine a picture and then tell a story about it.

The card does little to shape or influence the subject’s fantasy material and can thus be seen as a relatively pure product of his or her unconscious.

Picture 16

Picture 8GF

Description of Card:

A young girl is seated on a couch and is holding a doll in her hands. Behind her is an older woman who appears to be reading to her out of a book.

Frequent Plots:

  • A mother and her daughter, with the mother advising, consoling, scolding, or instructing the child.
  • The mother is reading to the child for pleasure or entertainment.

General Discussion:

  • The intention here is to bring out the style and manner of mother-child interaction.
  • When older women are the subjects, the picture often elicits feelings and attitudes toward children. Yhe card often elicits negative feelings and interactions, and it is important to note how these feelings are resolved, expressed, or avoided.

Picture 8GF

Picture 8BM

Picture 7GF

Description of Card:

A young boy in the foreground is staring directly out of the picture. In the background is a hazy image of two men performing surgery on a patient who is lying down.

Frequent Plots:

  • Stories revolve around either ambition or aggression.
  • Fears of becoming harmed or mutilated while in a passive state.
  • A scene in which someone was shot and is now being operated on.
  • General Discussion:

The picture can be seen as a thinly veiled depiction of a young man’s oedipal conflicts, with concomitant feelings of castration anxiety and hostility. Thus, it is important to note what feelings the boy or other characters in the story have toward the older man performing the surgery.

Description of Card:

A young woman sitting on the edge of a sofa looks back over her shoulder at an older man with a pipe in his mouth who seems to be addressing her.

Frequent Plots:

The man is usually seen as proposing some sort of an activity to the woman, and the plot often includes her reaction to this suggestion.

General Discussion:

  • Female counterpart of the Picture 6BM.
  • It would elicit attitudes and feelings towards paternal figures.
  • A person who mistrusts interpersonal relationships typically creates a story in which the man is intrusive and the woman’s reaction is one of defensiveness and surprise. Subjects who are more trusting and comfortable usually develop themes in which the woman responds in a more accepting and flexible manner.

Picture 7GF

Picture 7BM

Picture 8BM

Picture 6GF

Description of Card:

An older man is looking at a younger man, who appears to be peering into space.

Frequent Plots:

  • Stories usually describe either a father-son relationship or a boss-employee situation.
  • The older man is most frequently in the position of advising or instructing the younger one.

General Discussion:

Obtain information about authority figures and, more specifically, the subject’s own father. The card can show how the subject deals with external demands and attitudes toward

authority.

Picture 6GF

Description of Card:

A woman in the foreground is standing behind a tree, observing another woman who is running along a beach below.

Frequent Plots:

  • Usually, the two women are seen as being in some sort of conflict,
  • often over a man.
  • The woman “hiding behind” the tree has done something wrong.

General Discussion:

  • This card basically deals with female peer relations and is important in elaborating on issues such as conflict resolution, jealousy, sibling rivalry, and competitiveness.
  • Stories may provide details surrounding paranoid ideation. The dynamics of suspiciousness and distrust are usually discussed.

Picture 9BM

Picture 6BM

Picture 9GF

Picture 7BM

Description of Card:

On a road in a chasm, several figures are proceeding along a path toward a bridge. Above them and against the side of a cliff appears to be a dragon.

Frequent Plots:

Typically, stories of attack and escape are elicited in which the subject takes into account the dragon, the path, and the obscure figures in the distance.

General Discussion:

  • The picture also represents unknown and threatening forces, and reflects the manner in which the subjects deal with fear of attack.
  • Subjects’ stories can often suggest the degree to which they experience a sense of control over their environment and the course of their lives.

Picture 10

Picture 11

Picture 9GF

Description of card:

An elderly woman is standing parallel to a window. Behind her is a younger man with his face down. He is holding onto his hat.

Frequent Plots:

Typically elicits stories of a son who is either presenting sad news to his mother, or attempting to prepare her for his departure to some distant location.

General Discussion:

An source of information regarding the attitudes and feelings of males toward their mothers or maternal figures.

Description of Card:

A country setting depicts a tree, with a rowboat pulled up next to it. No human figures are present.

Frequent Plots: Stories frequently center on themes of loneliness, peace, or enjoyment

of nature.

General Discussion:

  • With suicidal or depressed subjects, there may be an elaboration of feelings of abandonment and isolation—for example, someone has been lost or has fallen from the boat.
  • More stable, adjusted subjects are likely to discuss the peace of being alone in the woods and perhaps of fishing or having gone fishing furtherdown the stream.

Description of Card:

Four men in a field are lying against one another.

Frequent Plots:

Stories typically provide some explanation of why the men are there and frequently describe them either as homeless wanderers or as working men who are taking a much-needed rest.

General Discussion:

This picture is particularly helpful in providing information about relations with members of the same sex.

Picture 12 F

Picture 12BG

Picture 11

Picture 9BM

Picture 6BM

Description of Card:

One person is holding his or her head against another person’s shoulder. The gender of the two persons is not defined.

Frequent Plots:

Stories usually center around some interaction between a male and a female, and may involve either a greeting between the two or a departure.

General Discussion:

  • This card often gives useful information regarding how the subject perceives male-female relationships, particularly those involving some degree of closeness and intimacy.
  • Sometimes, males interpret the embrace as involving two males, which may suggest the possibility of a repressed or overt homosexual orientation.

Picture 12 BG

Picture 10

Description of Card:

A portrait of a woman is in the foreground; an older woman holding her chin is in the background.

Frequent Plots:

Stories center on the relationship or specific communications between the two figures.

General Discussion:

  • This picture elicits descriptions and conceptions of mother figures.
  • Often, these negative qualities are feelings that the subject has toward her own mother but can indirectly, and, therefore, more safely, project onto the figure of a mother-in-law.

Picture 12F

Procedure

Questioning and Inquiry

  • Current situation. What is happening at the moment?
  • Thoughts and feelings of the character. What the characters are thinking and feeling?
  • Preceding events. What has led up to the event shown in the picture?
  • Outcome. How does it end?

  • Time

Time measured should begin the picture is first presented and end when the subject begins his/her story.

  • Recording

Complete responses should be recorded

  • Order of Presentation

Usually, the cards should be administered according to their sequential numbering system.

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