The Psychoanalytic Strategy Essay Example for Free

The Psychoanalytic Strategy Essay Introduction: The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective personality test that was designed at Harvard in the 1930s by Christiana D. Morgan and Henry A. Murray. Along with the MMPI and the Rorschach, the TAT is one of the most widely used psychological tests. The original purpose of the TAT was to reveal the underlying dynamics of the subjects personality, such as internal conflicts, dominant drives and interests, motives, etc.   (Encyclopedia, 2006) The TAT works on the principle that a subjects unconscious can be tapped to reveal repressed aspects of personality, motives and needs for achievement, power and intimacy, and problem-solving abilities. The TAT is a projective test in that, like the Rorschach test, its assessment of the subject is based on what he or she projects onto the ambiguous images. Each story created by a subject is carefully analyzed to uncover underlying needs, attitudes, and patterns of reaction. Description: The TAT uses a series of 31 provocative yet ambiguous pictures that depict a variety of social and interpersonal situations (Encyclopedia, 2006). The subject is asked to tell a story about each picture to the examiner. Of the 31 pictures, 10 are gender-specific while 21 others can be used with adults of either sex and with children. As of 2001, the TAT is distributed by Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement.The 31 cards are meant to be divided into two series of ten pictures each, with the pictures of the second series being purposely more unusual, dramatic, and bizarre than those of the first. Suggested administration involves one full hour being devoted to a series, with the two sessions being separated by a day or more. There are several formal scoring systems that have been developed for analyzing TAT stories. Two common methods that are currently used in research are the Defense Mechanisms Manual (Cramer, 1991) and Social Cognition and Object Relations (Westen, 1991)scale. The examiner shows the subject a series of story cards taken from the full set of 31 TAT cards. The usual number of cards shown to the subject is between 10 and 14, although Murray recommended the use of 20 cards, administered in two separate one-hour sessions with the subject. The subject is then instructed to tell a story about the picture on each card, with specific instructions to include a description of the event in the picture, the developments that led up to the event, the thoughts and feelings of the people in the picture, and the outcome of the story. The examiner keeps the cards in a pile face down in front of him or her, gives them to the subject one at a time, and asks the subject to place each card face down as its story is completed. Administration of the TAT usually takes about an hour. TAT is often a part of personality evaluation tests. It is considered to be effective in eliciting information about a persons view of the world and his or her attitudes toward the self and others. As people taking the TAT proceed through the various story cards and tell stories about the pictures, they reveal their expectations of relationships with peers, parents or other authority figures, subordinates, and possible romantic partners (Encyclopedia, 2006). In addition to assessing the content of the stories that the subject is telling, the examiner evaluates the subjects manner, vocal tone, posture, hesitations, and other signs of an emotional response to a particular story picture. Several adaptations of the TAT were developed for research with specific populations. In the Thompson-TAT or T-TAT (Thompson, 1949), a version for black examinees, the adaptation consisted of little more than the darkening of the characters’ skin (Bailey Green, 1977). In the adaptation for handicapped examinees (cited in Zubin et al., 1965), crutches were simply added to some of the figures. In the versions developed for cross-cultural research culture-specific portrayals of the themes have been used in the TAT cards. Evaluation using TAT: Experts in the use of the TAT recommend obtaining a personal and medical history from the subject before giving the TAT, in order to have some context for evaluating what might otherwise appear to be abnormal or unusual responses. For example, frequent references to death or grief in the stories would not be particularly surprising from a subject who had recently been bereaved. In addition, it has been opined that the TAT is most effective when combined with other interviews and tests. Students in medicine, psychology, or other fields who are learning to administer and interpret the TAT are advised to be conservative in their interpretations, and to err on the side of health rather than of psychopathology when evaluating a subjects responses. In addition, the 1992 Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association requires examiners to be knowledgeable about cultural and social differences, and to be responsible in interpreting test results with regard to these differences. Moreover, in interpreting responses to the TAT, examiners typically focus their attention on one of three areas: the content of the stories that the subject tells; the feeling or tone of the stories; or the subjects behaviors apart from responses. While the story content usually reveals the subjects attitudes, fantasies, wishes, inner conflicts, and view of the outside world, the story structure typically reflects the subjects feelings, assumptions about the world, and an underlying attitude of optimism or pessimism. Thematic apperception tests published recently have more structured and modern stimulus material and some carry parallel versions for ethnic minorities. These newer instruments have a more â€Å"actuarial† approach, that is, response scoring is based on a specific system involving numerical scores, and validation is grounded on statistical procedures (Masling, 1997). The psychometric validation of thematic apperception tests such as the CAST, the RATC, and the TEMAS mark a shift from a clinical to a psychometr ­ic approach in the development of thematic apperception tests (Masling, 1997). Limitations: The TAT has been called â€Å"a clinician’s delight and a statistician’s nightmare,† in part because its administration is usually not standardized. Since the TAT is used primarily for personality assessment rather than diagnosis of mental disorders, it does not yield a score in the usual sense. A normative scoring system for responses is absent in TAT. The original scoring system devised in 1943 by Henry Murray, is time-consuming and unwieldy. Other scoring systems have since been introduced that focus on one or two specific variables—for example, hostility or depression. While these systems are more practical for clinical use, they lack comprehensiveness. No single system presently used for scoring the TAT has achieved widespread acceptance. The basic drawback of any scoring system in evaluating responses to the TAT story cards is that information that is not relevant to that particular system is simply lost. The three writers, Scott O. Lilienfeld, James M. Wood and Howard N. Garb, have found that tests such as the Rorschach inkblot test, Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT) and the Draw-a-Person Test are frequently ineffective in identifying most psychiatric conditions due to a lack of standards in administration, scoring and subjective interpretation. A recent subject of controversy in TAT interpretation concerns the use of computers to evaluate responses. Computers have two basic limitations for use with the TAT: the first is that they cannot observe and record the subjects vocal tone, eye contact, and other aspects of behavior that a human examiner can note. Second, computers are not adequate for the interpretation of unusual subject profiles. American psychologists practicing in juvenile and family courts discovered that only 3 percent relied on a standardized TAT scoring system (Lilienfeld et al, 2001). Unfortunately, some evidence suggests that clinicians who interpret the TAT in an intuitive way are likely to over diagnose psychological disturbance. Uses of TAT: The TAT is often used in individual assessments of candidates for employment in fields such as law enforcement, military leadership positions, religious ministry, education, diplomatic service, etc. TAT is often administered to individuals who have already received a diagnosis in order to match them with the type of psychotherapy best suited to their personalities, or in some cases to help the therapist understand why the treatment seems to be stalled or blocked (Murray). The extensive research on achievement motivation by McClelland and his colleagues (e.g., McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, Lowell, 1953) gave the TAT widespread fame. It is sometimes used for forensic purposes in evaluating the motivations and general attitudes of persons accused of violent crimes (Lara-Kroon, 2007). The TAT is currently used as a tool for research around areas of psychology such as dreams, fantasies, mate selection and what motivates people to choose their occupation. The TAT can be used to help people understand their own personality in greater depth and build on that knowledge in making important life decisions. Criticism: The TAT is criticized as false or outdated by many psychologists mainly because of declining adherence to the Freudian principle of repression on which the test is based. They hold that TAT is unscientific because it cannot be proved to be valid or reliable. The TAT has been criticized for its lack of a standardized method of administration as well as the lack of standard norms for interpretation. Studies of the interactions between examiners and test subjects have found that the race, sex, and social class of both participants influence both the stories that are told and the way the stories are interpreted by the examiner. In addition, the 31 standard pictures have been criticized for being too gloomy or depressing, and therefore limiting the range of personality characteristics that the test can assess. The TAT cannot be administered to groups. Conclusion: Thus we find that Tat continues to remain a popular psychological evaluation tool. It has evolved over time to overcome certain drawbacks. Bibliography: Scott O. Lilienfeld, James M. Wood and Howard N. Garb (2001). Whats Wrong with this picture? Scientific American. May 2001. Lara-Kroon, Nicky Cohen de (2007). The history of projective testing (emphasizing the thematic apperception test). http://www.cohendelara.com/publicaties/history.htm Zubin, J., Eron, L. D., Schumer, F. (1965). An experimental approach to projective techniques. London: Wiley. Thompson, C. E. (1949). The Thompson Modification of the Thematic Apperception Test. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bailey, B. E., Green, J. (1977). Black Thematic Apperception Test stimulus material. Journal of Personalit y Assessment, 41, 25-30. McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders (2006). Thematic Apperception Test. http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Thematic-Apperception-Test.html Murray A. Henry. Uses of the Thematic Apperception Test. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/107/7/498