Matakuliah
Tahun
: Psikologi Diagnostik
: 2010
Projective Assessment of Personality I
Pertemuan 3
Projective Assessment of Personality
• Frank (1939) initiated this approach, stressing that
projective tests had two principal features:
– the use of media that were variously described as ambiguous,
unstructured
– plastic and tasks in which there were a wide range of possible
responses that were relatively free from social prescriptions,
thus allowing for maximum expression of individual
differences.
• An individual’s response(s) to these stimuli can reflect
internal needs, emotions, past experiences, thought
processes, relational patterns, and various aspects
of behavior
• Subject’s lack of awareness of the intent of the examiner
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Projective Assessment of Personality
Subtypes of Projective tests:
• Association techniques (e.g., the Rorschach, word
association) in which a word or image is associated with
stimuli
• Completion techniques (e.g., the Sentence Completion
Test)
• Construction techniques (e.g., the TAT) involving the
creation of an art form such as a story or picture
• Expressive techniques such as play or psychodrama.
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Projective Assessment
• Projection Coined in the 1930s, the term projective tests was
derived from psychoanalytic concepts
• In contrast to questionnaires, inventories, and other
assessment instruments of the time, such methods were
intended as techniques for making unconscious aspects of
personality manifest.
• Freud’s concept of projection as a defensive operation,
nonetheless used the term to characterize ways subjects
attributed their own desires, feelings, and behaviors to others
or at least ways in which needs and motives influenced
perception
• Apperception - organizational scheme shaped by the
individual’s past experience.
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Rorschach
• First introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann
Rorschach in 1920’s.
• Consists of 10 inkblots.
• Test was criticized in the 1950’ and 1960’s because of
the lack of norms and standardized procedures.
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Rorschach
• The central assumption of the Rorschach is that stimuli
from the environment are organized by a person’s
specific needs, motives, and conflicts, and by certain
perceptual “sets.”
• Rorschach responses provide three types of data, which
are commonly referred to as the structural, the thematic,
and the behavioral components of the test protocol
• Generate comprehensive descriptions of a respondent’s
personality functioning incl. adaptive strengths and
weaknesses in how people manage stress, attend to and
perceive their surroundings, form concepts and ideas,
experience and express affect, view themselves, and
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regard other people.
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Administration
• Step 1: Introducing the Respondent to the Technique
Step 2: Giving the Testing Instructions
– Exner (1993) recommends that the examiner hand the subject
the first card and ask, “What might this be?”
• Step 3: The Response (Association) Phase
– Record the time and all responses in verbatim
• Step 4: Inquiry
– collect the additional information required for an accurate scoring
of the responses. It is intended to clarify the responses that have
already been given, not to obtain new responses
• Step 5: Scoring
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Scoring
• Code the different categories and calculate the different quantitative
formulas in the structural summary. There is general agreement
throughout the different Rorschach systems that these categories
include
(a) The location, or the area of the inkblot that is used. This can vary from the
use of the entire blot (whole response) to the use of an unusual detail (Dd).
(b) The determinants, or specific properties of the blot they used in
making their responses (color, shape, and so on); and
(c) The content, or general class of objects to which the response
belongs (human, architecture, anatomy, etc.).
• Popular Responses refers to the presence of frequently perceived
responses.
• Special Scores incl. unusual characteristics of the response such
as unusual verbalizations or inappropriate logic.
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Thematic Apperception Test
• Developed by Henry Murray (1938)
• 31 TAT cards depicting people in a variety of ambiguous
situations (one blank card)
• The examinee is instructed to make up a story that
includes what is occurring in the picture: the thoughts
and feelings of the characters, the events that led up to
the situation, and the outcome of the story.
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Thematic Apperception Test
• The basic assumption was that unconscious fantasies
could be revealed by interpreting the stories subjects told
regarding ambiguous pictures—access to things that a
client was either unwilling to tell or unconscious of.
• Murray’s needs-press theory
• Thema – units of behavior that result from the interaction
between needs and press
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Thematic Apperception Test
• Murray (1943) describes the TAT as a “method of
revealing to the trained interpreter some of the dominant
drives, emotions, sentiments, complexes, and conflicts of
personality
• Imore structured stimuli and require more organized and
complex verbal responses
• Assesses the “here and now” features of an individual’s
life situation rather than the basic underlying structure of
personality.
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Assets and Limitations
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Less susceptibility to faking
Focus on the global nature of personality
Ease of rapport
can be approached from, and interpreted by,
a number of different theoretical orientations.
• Greater potential for the subject to bias and distort his
or her responses
• Inadequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability,
and standardization in administration and scoring
• Confounded by verbal abilities, age, sex, intelligence,
and reading ability (Klein, 1986).
• Quite sensitive to situational variables
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TAT - Administration
• Variations on the instructions should also emphasize the
four requirements of the story structure:
1. Current situation
2. Thoughts and feelings of the characters
3. Preceding events
4. Outcome
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TAT - Procedure
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Time
Record responses, behavioral observations
Questioning and Inquiry
Order of presentation
Use of the TAT (or CAT) with children
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TAT - Scoring Systems
• The Bellak scoring system (Bellak & Abrams, 1997)
• Cramer’s (1996) scoring system
• Weston’s coding system (1995)
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Children Apperception Test
• Developed by psychiatrist and psychologist Leopold Bellak
and Sonya Sorel Bellak and first published in 1949
• CAT is an individually administered projective personality
test appropriate for children aged three to 10 years.
• Presenting a series of pictures and asking a child to
describe the situations and make up stories about the
people or animals in the pictures
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Children Apperception Test
• Assess conflicts related to certain stages of a child's
development include relationship issues, sibling rivalry,
and aggression.
• Animals were chosen for the pictures because it was
believed that young children relate better to animals than
humans.
• Theoretical basis – Murray’s theory of personality
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CAT - Administration
• The CAT takes 20–45 minutes to administer
• The test may be used directly in therapy or as a play
technique in other settings.
• After carefully establishing rapport with the child, the
examiner shows the child one card after another and
encourages the child to tell a story about the characters.
• The examiner may ask the child to describe, for
example, what led up to the scene depicted, the
emotions of the characters, and what might happen in
the future.
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CAT - Interpretation
The scorer's interpretation should take into account the
following variables:
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the story's primary theme
the story's hero or heroine
the needs or drives of the hero or heroine
the environment in which the story takes place
the child's perception of the figures in the picture
the main conflicts in the story
the anxieties and defenses expressed in the story
the function of the child's superego and the integration of the
child's ego.
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