Significance of Thematic Apperception Test
... T is a picture test for investigation of the dynamics of personality as it manifests itself in interpersonal relations and in the apperception or meaningful interpretation of the behavior. It is a very popular projective test, which taps numerous personality traits by assuming that the individual will unconsciously project his /her personality characteristics onto the stories. ... The administration, interpretation and scoring of Thematic Apperception Test is not standardized because of many different scoring systems. ... It is a test, which can be effectively put to use only by clinical psychologists who have taken special training for this test. Significance of Thematic Apperception Test Introduction T. ... Henry Murray introduced Thematic Apperception Test in Harvard University in 1935 as a picture test for personality; consists of thirty-one cards, most of which portray individuals in ambiguous and different situations and different card sequences for women, girls, men and boys. It is a projective content-based test that is like other projective tests, less structured, do not have any correct answers rather than cognitive tests, which are more specific fact-based ways of eliciting what an individual knows about the world. ... Earliest picture story test in psycho diagnosis goes back to as far as in 1932 that is Schwartz’s Social Situation Test. ... The term projective test has been derived from the word projection coined by Sigmund Freud according to whom “the psyche develops the neurosis of anxiety when it feels itself unequal to the task of mastering (sexual) excitation arising endogenously. ... A need is a construct, which stands force (the physiochemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force which organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation, and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing unsatisfying situation. ... Apperception refers to an organism’s dynamically meaningful interpretation of a perception; the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of any individual to form a new whole. ... There are lists of needs and presses, and their combinations which come under the domain of Thematic Apperception Test which are discussed as follows: Needs motivated by desire for power, property, prestige, knowledge, or creative achievement include achievement, acquisition, aggression, construction, counteraction, dominance, exposition, recognition, and understanding. ... These include tests for African Americans (Thompson, 1949), test for Native Americans (1942), test for Indian culture patterns (1960), Iowa Picture Interpretation Test (Hurley, Johnston, 1955,1977), Auditory Apperception Test (Stone, 1953), Gerontological Apperception Test (Wolk &Wolk, 1971), Senior Apperception Test (Bellak and Bellak, 1973,1996), School Apperception Test (Solomon & Starr, 1968) and etcetera. ... Test can be group or self-administered. If the test is self administered, the client tells each story orally and the psychologist records the responses by hand or by means of a recording device. ... The psychologist can control some of this atmosphere by the instruction he/she gives and the manner in which he/she gives them, by the extra test comments and by his/her general clinical attitude. ... The psychologist also notes the response style of the client, the test behavior provides a glimpse of defenses by the way the client sits, sits back, or away from an “unpleasant card”, and answers too quickly or pauses rather too long. ... Few contemporary scoring systems like the Bellack Analysis Sheet show promise of providing this test, solid psychometric properties such as standardization, reliability and validity. ... T can be considered as a sample situation test that permits references concerning the total personality dynamics. ... These include assessing which characters is the subject identifying himself or herself, which material is actually of personal significance and which can be viewed as culturally determined responses of a stereotyped nature, which stories reflect the patient’s fantasies and which are his or her actual tendencies or behavior. The therapist needs to decide how to distinguish the repressed from the overt levels of personality and how to evaluate the actual significance or depth of the patterns noted in the T. ... It is not a test, which anyone can use after merely studying the manual or a few books on interpretation. ... It is a test for trained clinical psychologists. ... While research has shown low validity and negligible reliability, many clinicians continue to use it, as a component of a test battery.