“Sentence Completion” technique (for egocentrism). Thematic apperception test (tat) Thematic apperception test tat g murray

Presentation on the topic:
Thematic apperceptive
test
Performed:
Ryazanova Evgenia,
group 31P Definition
Essence and purpose
History of the creation of the technique
Adaptations and modifications of the technique
Testing process
Instructions
Stimulus material
Description of stimulus material (example)
Interpretation of results
Case Study Example
List of used literature

Definition

“The Thematic Apperception Test, better known as TAT, is a method
with which one can identify dominant impulses,
emotions, relationships, complexes and conflicts of personality and which
helps to determine the level of hidden tendencies that
the subject or patient hides or cannot show due to
their unconsciousness"
- Henry A Murray. Thematic apperception test. - Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 1943.
Content

Essence and purpose

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a set of
31 tables with black and white photographic images on thin
white matte cardboard. One of the tables is a blank white sheet.
The subject is presented in a certain order with 20 tables from this
set (their choice is determined by the gender and age of the subject). His
the task is to compose plot stories based on
situation depicted on each table.
In addition to psychodiagnostic tasks, TAT is also used in
for research purposes as a tool for recording certain
personal variables (most often motives).
TAT is not an exhaustive method for studying either personality,
no behavioral disorders, no psychosomatic disorders, no neuroses,
no psychosis. It has been established that the method is not effective when used in
working with children under four years of age. Since TAT and Rorschach give
complementary information, then the combination of these two tests
exceptionally effective. It is recommended to use the method as
preparation for psychotherapy or brief psychoanalysis.
Content

History of the creation of the technique

History of the creation of the technique
Henry A Murray
The thematic apperception test was first introduced
described in an article by K. Morgan and G. Murray in 1935 (Morgan,
Murray, 1935). In this publication, TAT was presented as
a method of studying imagination that allows
characterize the personality of the subject thanks to
to the fact that the task of interpreting the depicted situations is
which was placed in front of the subject, allowed him
fantasize without visible restrictions and
contributed to the weakening of the mechanisms
psychological protection. Theoretical background and
standardized processing and interpretation scheme
TAT received a little later, in the monograph
"Personality Research" by G. Murray and his colleagues
(Murray, 1938). Final TAT interpretation scheme and
final (third) edition of the stimulus
The material was published in 1943.
Content

Adaptations and modifications of the technique

TAT options for different age groups:
Children's Apperception Test (CAT)
Michigan Drawing Test (MRI)
P. Simonds Stories Test (SPST)
Wolk's Gerontological Apperception Test (GAT)
Senior Apperception Test (SAT) by L. Bellack and S. Bellack
TAT options for different ethnocultural groups:
S. Thompson TAT for African Americans (T-TAT)
TAT for Africans
TAT options for solving various applied problems: Professional
apperception test (VAT)
Test of Group Projection (TGP)
Family Relations Indicator (FRI)
School Apperceptive Method (SAM)
Educational Apperception Test (EAT)
School Anxiety Test (SAT)
TAT options for measuring individual motives:
TAT for diagnosing achievement motivation by D. McClelland
TAT for diagnosing achievement motivation by H. Heckhausen
Content

Testing process

A complete examination using TAT takes 1.5-2 hours and, as a rule,
is divided into two sessions. With relatively short stories, all 20 stories
can be done in an hour. The opposite situation is also possible - when two sessions
It turns out not enough, and you have to arrange 3-4 meetings. In all cases,
when the number of sessions is more than one, an interval of 1-2 days is made between them. At
If necessary, the interval may be longer, but should not exceed one week.
In this case, the subject should not know either the total number of paintings or what
next meeting he will have to continue the same work - otherwise
he will unconsciously prepare plots for his stories in advance. At first
The psychologist lays out no more than 3-4 pieces of work in advance on the table (image down).
tables and then, as needed, pulls out tables one at a time in advance
cooked sequence from the table or bag. When asked about the number of paintings
an evasive answer is given; However, before starting work, the examinee must
be determined that it will last at least an hour. Cannot be allowed
the subject should look through other tables in advance.
The general situation in which the survey is carried out must meet three
requirements: 1. All possible interference must be excluded. 2. Subject
should feel quite comfortable. 3. The situation and behavior of the psychologist
should not update the subject’s motives and attitudes.
Content

Instructions

The instructions consist of two parts. The first part must be read verbatim by heart, and
twice in a row, despite possible protests from the subject:
“I will show you pictures, you look at the picture and, starting from it, make up a story,
plot, history. Try to remember what needs to be mentioned in this story. You will say what kind of situation you think this is, what kind of moment is depicted in the picture, what is happening to people. Besides,
you will say what happened before this moment, in the past in relation to him, what happened before. Then you say
what will happen after this situation, in the future in relation to it, what will happen next. Moreover, it must be said
what the people depicted in the picture or any of them feel, their experiences, emotions, feelings.
And you will also say what the people depicted in the picture think, their reasoning, memories, thoughts,
solutions". This part of the instructions must not be changed.
Second part of the instructions:
There are no “right” or “wrong” options; any story that matches the instructions
good;
You can tell it in any order. It’s better not to think through the whole story in advance, but to start right away
say the first thing that comes to mind, and changes or amendments can be introduced later, if necessary
need;
literary processing is not required; the literary merits of the stories will not be assessed.
The main thing is to make it clear what we are talking about. Some specific questions can be asked along the way.
(The last point is not entirely true, since in reality the logic of the stories
vocabulary, etc. are among the significant diagnostic indicators).
After the subject confirms that he understood the instructions, he is given the first table. IN
if any of the five main points are missing from his story, then
The main part of the instructions should be repeated again. The same can be done again after
the second story, if not everything is mentioned in it. Starting from the third story, instructions
is no longer recalled, and the absence of certain moments in the story is considered as
diagnostic indicator. If the subject asks questions like “Have I said everything?”, then
they should answer: “If you think that’s it, then the story is over, move on to the next picture,
If you think it’s not there and something needs to be added, then add it.”
Content

Stimulus material

Content

10. Stimulus material

Content

11. Stimulus material

Content

12. Description of stimulus material (example)

Code
designation
table
1
2
Description of the image
Typical themes and features that appear in the story
The boy looks at what lies in front of him. Attitude towards parents, the relationship between autonomy and submission.
there is a violin on the table.
external requirements, achievement motivation and its frustration,
symbolically expressed sexual conflicts.
Village scene: in the foreground Family relationships, conflicts with the family environment in the context
shot of a girl with a book, in the background problems of autonomy-subordination. Love triangle. Conflict
- a man works in the field, desires for personal growth and a conservative environment. Woman on
The older woman looks at him. in the background is often perceived as pregnant, which provokes
relevant topic. The muscular figure of a man can
provoke homosexual reactions. Gender-role stereotypes. IN
In the Russian context, stories often arise related to
national history and with professional self-affirmation.
3BM
3GF
4
On the floor next to the couch - The character's perceived gender may indicate hidden
the crouched figure most likely has homosexual attitudes. Problems of aggression, in particular self-aggression,
boy, there is a revolver on the floor next to him.
as well as depression and suicidal intentions.
Young woman standing near the door, Depressive feelings.
holding out his hand to her; other hand
covers his face.
A woman hugs a man. A wide range of feelings and problems in the intimate sphere: themes of autonomy and
shoulders; the man seems to strive for infidelity, the image of men and women in general. Half naked female
a figure in the background when he is perceived as a third character, and
break out.
not like a picture on the wall, provokes plots related to jealousy,
love triangle, conflicts in the sphere of sexuality.
5
6VM
A middle-aged woman looks in. Reveals a range of feelings associated with the image of the mother. In Russian
through
half open
door
in the context, however, social plots associated with
old-fashioned furnished room.
personal intimacy, security, insecurity of personal life from
other people's eyes.
A short elderly woman stands. A wide range of feelings and problems in the mother-son relationship.
with his back to the tall young man,
guiltily lowered his eyes.
Content

13. Interpretation of results

G. Lindzi identifies a number of basic assumptions on which the interpretation of TAT is based.
The primary assumption is that completing or structuring an unfinished or
unstructured situation, the individual manifests his aspirations, dispositions and conflicts in this.
The following 5 assumptions are related to determining the most diagnostically informative stories or
their fragments.
1. When writing a story, the narrator usually identifies with one of the characters, and desires,
the aspirations and conflicts of this character may reflect the desires, aspirations and conflicts of the narrator.
2. Sometimes the narrator's dispositions, aspirations, and conflicts are presented in an implicit or symbolic way.
form.
3. Stories have unequal significance for the Diagnosis of impulses and conflicts. In some it may
contain a lot of important diagnostic material, while Others contain very little or none at all
absent.
4. Themes that follow directly from the stimulus material are likely to be less significant than themes that directly follow
not conditioned by stimulus material.
5. Recurring themes are most likely to reflect the narrator's impulses and conflicts.
Another 4 assumptions are related to inferences from the projective content of stories concerning other
aspects of behavior.
1. Stories can reflect not only stable dispositions and conflicts, but also current ones associated with
current situation.
2. Stories can reflect events from the subject's past experience in which he did not participate, but was theirs
witnessed, read about them, etc. At the same time, the very choice of these events for the story is connected with its impulses and
conflicts.
3. Stories can reflect, along with individual, group and sociocultural attitudes.
4. Dispositions and conflicts that can be inferred from stories do not necessarily appear in
behavior or are reflected in the mind of the narrator.
Content

14. Case Study Example

Content
“There is some kind of... hmm... something like this is depicted
incomprehensible... some kind of cosmic planet,
because there are some semicircular ones here
dugouts, in the back
plan........some kind of planet is visible, and
space and
at the same time ancient in appearance. Probably in space
there was also some ancient time. Because
that the world depicted here is not modern... Month,
as if... looks as if he was lying down with his hump
at these legs and looks up. But it's in one
dugout, and in another dugout - too, which means
there's a light there, something like that
- lamp, someone there... and, in my opinion,
It’s even a baby, it’s their cosmic baby. U
he has a huge head, a bandage on his head
white... And they feel... well, they feel...
they are nothing but joys, that can be judged
at least... for this kid, he’s too much
some proud, contented man, going his own way
little dugout, small...”

15. List of used literature

Leontyev D.A. Thematic apperception test. 2nd ed.,
stereotypical. M.: Smysl, 2000. - 254 p.
Sokolova E.T. Psychological study of personality:
projective techniques. - M., TEIS, 2002. – 150 p.
http://flogiston.ru/library/tat
Content

ISBN 5-89357-087-1

Thematic apperception test (TAT) is one of the most popular and rich in its capabilities, but at the same time one of the most difficult to conduct and process psychodiagnostic techniques used in world practice. In terms of the total number of works devoted to him, TAT occupied third place in the 70s, second only to the Rorschach test and MMPI, and fourth in terms of the number of current publications, also behind Edwards’ Personality Preferences Scale (Buros, 1970, p.XXIV) - It ranks fourth in terms of frequency of use as a psychodiagnostic tool (Klopfer, Taulbee, 1976), and among projective methods - second, second only to the Rorschach test (Bellak, 1986).

In our country, TAT has gained fame and popularity since the late 60s - early 70s, when the more than thirty-year ban on psychological testing lost its force and the penetration of professional psychologists into the clinic intensified. Unfortunately, until today there are no full-fledged methodological manuals on this technique in Russian. Apart from small publications devoted to either issues of theoretical justification or particular aspects of working with TAT, we can name only three serious sources: the book by V.G. Norakidze (1975), in which TAT is analyzed and described as a research methodology, a textbook V.E. Renge (1979), in which the author’s theoretical justification and a relatively complete, but little developed scheme for interpreting the results are given in a limited volume, and the monograph by E.T. Sokolova (1980), which outlines the history of the creation of the methodology, its complete theoretical justification and some of the existing approaches to processing and interpretation of results are presented. In practice, many also use copied typewritten translations of fragments of works by G. Murray, D. Rapaport, S. Tomkins, A. Hartman and others, however, among them there is not a single one that could serve as a relatively complete practical guide. This manual is the first attempt at a systematic and detailed presentation of the technology of working with the Thematic Apperception Test in Russian.

This task took shape during the formation and development of the “Psychodiagnostics” section of the general psychology workshop at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University in the 1980s. TAT was part of the tools of the old workshop in the 70s (see Workshop, 1972), but then training in working with this technique was not carried out on a systematic, but rather on an intuitive basis. After the “Psychodiagnostics” section was highlighted in the workshop in the early 80s, teaching this technique began to become more systematic. The role of the missing textbooks was and is still being performed by introductory lecture cycles held at the beginning of the corresponding semester. This book, in particular its methodological part, is written on the basis of the mentioned lecture series, read by the author over the years. In addition to a general panorama of views and discussions about this technique and its detailed theoretical and empirical justification, the manual provides detailed guidance on conducting the study and detailed instructions on interpreting the results, provides an example of processing and interpretation of a specific case, and also outlines some signs that have a differential diagnostic value.

The author considers it his duty to express gratitude to M.Z. Dukarevich, who greatly contributed to improving his qualifications when working with TAT, I.M. Karlinskaya, who stimulated the writing of this manual, and N.A. Muravyova, who took on the work of the first reprint of the book.

1. General characteristics of the TAT technique

1.1. Essence and purpose of TAT

TAT was originally conceived as a technique for studying imagination. As it was used, however, it became clear that the diagnostic information obtained with its help goes far beyond the scope of this area and makes it possible to give a detailed description of the deep tendencies of the individual, including its needs and motives, attitudes towards the world, character traits, typical forms behavior, internal and external conflicts, features of the course of mental processes, mechanisms of psychological defense, etc. Based on TAT data, one can draw conclusions about the level of intellectual development, the presence of signs of certain mental disorders, although a clinical diagnosis can be made based on TAT data alone, as with any other psychological test, it is impossible. You cannot work with the technique “blindly”, without preliminary biographical (anamnestic) information about the subject. The most fruitful use of TAT in the clinic is

boundary states. At the same time, it is advisable to use it in one battery with the Rorschach test or MMPI, which provide information that complements the TAT data. Thus, information extracted from TAT, as a rule, allows for a more profound and meaningful interpretation of the structure of the MMPI profile, the nature and origin of certain peaks.

Although TAT provides the opportunity to obtain exceptionally deep and extensive information about an individual, it in no way guarantees that this information will be obtained in each particular case. The volume and depth of the information received depends on the personality of the subject and, to the greatest extent, on the qualifications of the psychodiagnostician, and the lack of qualifications affects not only the stage of interpretation of the results, but also during the conduct of the study. Inept work, unsuccessful interaction with the subject often causes strong defensive reactions in him and - at best - reduces the information content of the results several times.

In ordinary situations of a relatively massive psychodiagnostic examination, TAT, as a rule, does not justify the effort expended. It is recommended to be used in cases that raise doubts, require subtle differential diagnosis, as well as in situations of maximum responsibility, such as when selecting candidates for leadership positions, astronauts, pilots, etc. It is recommended to be used in the initial stages of individual psychotherapy, since it allows one to immediately identify psychodynamics, which in ordinary psychotherapeutic work becomes visible only after a fair amount of time. TAT is especially useful in a psychotherapeutic context in cases requiring acute and short-term treatment (for example, depression with suicidal risk). L. Bellak considers TAT very useful for establishing contact between the therapist and the client and forming an adequate psychotherapeutic attitude in the latter (Bellak, 1986, p. 158-159). In particular, using TAT stories as discussion material can successfully overcome

possible difficulties for the client in communicating and discussing their problems, free association, etc.

Contraindications to the use of TAT, as well as other psychological tests, include (1) acute psychosis or a state of acute anxiety; (2) difficulty in establishing contacts; (3) the likelihood that the client will consider the use of tests as a surrogate, a lack of interest on the part of the therapist; (4) the likelihood that the client will perceive this as a manifestation of the therapist's incompetence; (5) specific fear and avoidance of testing situations of any kind; (6) the possibility that the test material stimulates the expression of excessive problematic material at too early a stage; (7) specific contraindications related to the specific dynamics of the psychotherapeutic process at the moment and requiring postponing testing until later (Meyer, 1951). L. Bellak, however, referring to his experience of working with patients experiencing acute conditions, notes that the first of these contraindications is not absolute; the decision on the admissibility and advisability of testing must be made in each individual case, taking into account all factors (Bellak, 1986, p.168).

In addition to psychodiagnostic tasks, TAT is also used for research purposes as a tool for recording certain personal variables (most often motives).

1.2. Advantages and disadvantages of TAT

The main advantage of TAT is the richness, depth and variety of diagnostic information obtained with its help. In addition, interpretation schemes usually used in practice, including the scheme given in this manual, can be supplemented with new indicators depending on the tasks that the psychodiagnostician sets himself. The ability to combine different interpretive schemes or improve and supplement them based on

Based on our own experience of working with the methodology, the ability to process the same protocols many times using different schemes, the independence of the procedure for processing the results from the procedure for conducting the survey is another significant advantage of the methodology.

The main disadvantage of TAT is, first of all, the complexity of both the examination procedure and the processing and analysis of the results. The total examination time for a mentally healthy subject is rarely less than two hours. It takes almost the same amount of time to fully process the results obtained. At the same time, as already noted, high demands are placed on the qualifications of a psychodiagnostician, on which it decisively depends on whether it will be possible to obtain information suitable for psychodiagnostic interpretation. If this drawback is of a purely technical nature, then other shortcomings noted by various critics at first glance cast doubt on the general possibility of using the TAT as a psychodiagnostic tool: it is not based on a holistic theory, the test material was not constructed sufficiently systematically, it was not assessed according to generally accepted rules, and, finally, the legitimacy of the proposed interpretation schemes is problematic to say the least. However, the authors of the chapter dedicated to TAT in the “Psychological Encyclopedia” H.J. Kornadt and H. Zumkli note: “Paradoxically, perhaps, it was precisely these shortcomings that contributed to the widespread dissemination of TAT and other thematic apperceptive methods.” (Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.260). The next chapter will outline and discuss the main debates surrounding the issue of the theoretical and empirical validity of TAT.

1.3. Place of TAT in the system of methods of PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSTICS

TAT belongs to the class of projective psychodiagnostic methods. In contrast to widely used questionnaires, which make it possible to quantitatively assess the result of any individual against the background of the population as a whole using a set of ready-made scales, projective methods make it possible to obtain a kind of “imprint” of the internal state of the subject, which is then subjected to qualitative analysis and interpretation.

The TAT stimulus material is distinguished by two features: firstly, the relative completeness of coverage of all spheres of relations with the world, personal experience, and, secondly, the uncertainty, potential ambiguity of understanding and interpretation of the depicted situations. All TAT interpretation schemes are based on the idea that the general orientation and specific details of the subject’s understanding of certain situations, reflected in his stories according to the corresponding tables, allow us to draw a conclusion about his personal traits, motives and dispositions that determined exactly this, and not any other interpretation. D. Rapaport compares the difference between TAT and other diagnostic techniques with the difference between a free conversation, jumping from subject to subject, and a business conversation devoted to clarifying purely specific issues. "The less limited for him (man. - D.L.) sector of choice of the content of his thinking, the wider it is, the more obvious and demonstrative his internal organization, the strength and direction of motivation, basic interests, needs, position become, i.e. personality structure" (Rapaport, Gill, Schafer, 1946, p.399). Projective techniques often use quantitative indicators, but they usually perform an auxiliary function (see more details). Sokolova, 1980).

According to another classification (McClelland, 1981), TAT belongs to the class of operant methods - methods based on the analysis of free (within the instructions) verbal, graphic or any other production of the subject. The opposite of operant methods are respondent methods, in which the subject only selects one of several proposed alternatives. Respondent methods include questionnaires, ranking methods (for example, the method of studying value orientations), scaling methods (for example, semantic differential) and others. Some projective methods (Szondi and Luscher test) also belong to the respondent class. The author of this classification, D. McClelland, believes that it is operant methods that provide the most reliable and stable information about a person.

A more detailed generally accepted classification of projective techniques (Sokolova, 1980) classifies TAT as a group of interpretation techniques in which the subject is faced with the task of giving his own interpretation of the proposed situations. Finally, we can distinguish an even narrower group of thematic apperception techniques, including, in addition to the TAT itself, its analogues and modifications for different age, ethnocultural and social groups, as well as modifications for targeted and more accurate diagnosis of individual motivational tendencies (for more details, see the section 2.4).

The concept of apperception in psychology traditionally refers to the influence on the perception of past experience and personal characteristics. The concept of theme, which gave the test its name, is one of the central concepts of G. Murray’s personality theory, on the basis of which the TAT was created. We now turn to the history of the creation and justification of TAT as a psychodiagnostic technique.

2. History of creation and main approaches to substantiating TAT

2.1. The creation of TAT and its development in line with

PROJECTIVE METHODOLOGY

The thematic apperception test was developed at the Harvard Psychological Clinic by Henry Murray and his colleagues in the second half of the 30s. However, its background dates back to the beginning of this century. In 1907, H. Britten gave a group of subjects - boys and girls aged 13 to 20 years - to compose stories based on 9 paintings. The stories were then analyzed according to the following scheme: use of names, names of animals, first person narration, use of details, assessment of the quality of imagination, integrity, length of the stories, their explanatory power in relation to the picture, the introduction of religious, moral and social elements. Significant gender differences were identified for a number of indicators. A year later, a similar technique was used by W. Libby to study the relationship between imagination and feelings in schoolchildren of different ages; The imagination of older schoolchildren turned out to be more “subjective.” Then there was a break, and the method was rediscovered only in 1932 by L. Schwartz. While working with juvenile offenders, he created the "picture test of social situations" to facilitate contact in clinical interviews. The test included 8 paintings depicting typical situations from the life of juvenile offenders. The subject had to describe the situation, thoughts or words of the central character. Then he was asked to answer what he himself would say or do in this place. This made it possible to develop the conversation relatively quickly and obtain the required clinical information. The Schwartz test is also not widely used.

The thematic apperception test was first described in an article by K. Morgan and G. Murray in 1935 (Morgan, Murray, 1935). In this publication, TAT was presented as a method for studying imagination, allowing one to characterize the personality of the subject due to the fact that the task of interpreting depicted situations, which was posed to the subject, allowed him to fantasize without visible restrictions and contributed to the weakening of psychological defense mechanisms. The TAT received its theoretical justification and standardized scheme for processing and interpretation a little later, in the monograph “Study of Personality” by G. Murray and his colleagues (Murray, 1938). The final TAT interpretation scheme and the final (third) edition of the stimulus material were published in 1943 (Murray, 1943).

G. Murray's personality theory is reflected in Russian-language sources (see. Sokolova, 1980, pp.71-76; Heckhausen, 1986, i.l., p. 109-112), therefore we will dwell only on some of its points, which manifested themselves, in particular, in the approach he developed to the justification and interpretation of the TAT results.

Henry Murray "would best be described by his professional training as a psychodynamically oriented psychiatrist who never expressed full commitment to any school of psychoanalysis or other psychological movements" (Semeonoff, 1976, p. 103). In 1927, he received a doctorate in biochemistry, after which he entered Harvard University to teach clinical psychology. There he underwent psychoanalytic training.

Murray's theory, by his own admission, is genetically related to the theories of S. Freud, W. McDougall and K. Lewin. From Freud, Murray borrowed ideas about the subconscious dynamics of mental processes, the three-member structure of the personality (Id, Ego and Super-Ego) and the mechanisms of psychological defense; at McDougall's -

dynamic ideas about a finite set of basic human drives, one or another combination of which underlies all human manifestations; Lewin has ideas about the forces of the external environment and the current psychological situation that influence the individual and also determine his behavior.

The central concept of Murray's theory is the concept of need, which he introduced into the psychological lexicon instead of the previously used concepts of drive and instinct. Murray criticizes the concept of innate instinct, pointing out that, firstly, it is not clear whether we are talking about an innate need, that is, an impulse, or about innate forms of behavior, that is, actions aimed at satisfying needs; secondly, if we talk about instinct, we need evidence of the innate nature of the corresponding behavior or attraction, which in most cases is very difficult to provide (Murray, 1938, p.74). Therefore, introducing the concept of need, Murray proceeds from the indisputable fundamental fact of the interaction of any organism with the environment and defines need as an element of this interaction. Another element of interaction is the press. This is the pressure or influence exerted on the body by the forces of the external environment, which can be either positive (contribute to the fulfillment of a need) or negative (obstruct it). The combination of a certain need with a certain type of pressure forms a theme - a molar unit of behavior described in terms of interaction with the environment. Murray defines a theme as the dynamic structure of a single episode of such interaction (ibid., p.42). Thus, a person's life can be described as a sequence of episodes, each of which is characterized by its own theme.

Murray defines a need as “the potential or readiness of an organism to respond in a certain way under given conditions.” (ibid., p.61). At the same time, need is simultaneously understood as both an actual motivation and a stable tendency of the individual, manifesting itself under appropriate conditions. Murray devotes a lot of space to classifications of needs on various grounds and descriptions of specific types of needs. In theoretical terms, the most significant distinction is between primary (viscerogenic) and secondary (psychogenic) needs; the former, unlike the latter, are associated with processes localized in a certain way in the body. In practical terms, the most significant division is between the needs of explicit (objectified in certain forms of activity) and hidden (not objectified in this way), between which there is a whole range of intermediate forms (ibid., With. 111-112). Murray suggests that different types of needs differ in the degree of openness, as a result of which one cannot expect a correspondence between the needs manifested by a person in external behavior and those diagnosed using the TAT. This, however, is an advantage, not a disadvantage of TAT, because the deeper, latent needs of a person, manifested in him, make it possible to give a more complete description of the personality. Taking into account the degree of external objectification of certain needs makes it possible to predict the picture of real behavior.

The categories of need, press, and theme were central to Murray's framework for interpreting TAT stories. The TAT stimulus material was gradually selected to cover all topics corresponding to the list of needs proposed by Murray (see. Sokolova, 1980, p. 156-159; Heckhausen, 1986, p. 111). It was assumed that each table actualizes one or more needs of the subject and thereby allows one to reveal the corresponding topic. (Sokolova, 1980, p. 160-166), as well as to identify the thematic structures of the unconscious. “The following method of analysis and conclusions was used: each story of the subject was read separately and then an attempt was made to find a unifying theme.” (Murray, 1938, p.534). As the test was improved, it was revealed that the instruction to fantasize gives better results than the task of guessing the background of events, and also that the diagnostic value of the results largely depends on the presence in the images of at least one character with whom the subject could identify himself (taking into account his gender and age). Therefore, in the final version of Murray's interpretative scheme (Murray, 1943) the category of identification with the character(s) of the story took an important place. The main categories of analysis used in this framework are: 1. Identification features; 2. Needs (what and how intensely they manifest themselves); 3. Presses (which ones and how intensively); 4. Outcome of interaction; 5. Theme; 6. The interests and feelings of the narrator, manifested in the features of the story.

Already the first publications on TAT served as an impetus for the development by a number of authors, mainly close to Murray’s group, of new interpretative schemes. Murray's interpretive scheme was imperfect. E.T. Sokolova points out the insufficient validity of the theoretical assumptions taken as a basis, in particular, the provisions on the direct identification of the subject with the character of his story and on the purely projective, free nature of fantasy in the course of composing a story (Sokolova, 1980, pp.84-85).

L. Bellak cites more pragmatic considerations, namely that it was difficult for clinicians to grasp the concept of need in Murray's understanding, and that it took four to five hours to fully process the TAT protocol (20 stories) according to this scheme (Bellak, 1975, p.60). The development of new interpretative schemes pursued the goal, firstly, to make working with the test as convenient as possible in the conditions of practical work of a psychologist in the clinic, and, secondly, to bring the categorical grid into line with the theoretical views of the author of a particular scheme, with his ideas about , which personality variables are most important and which are secondary. L. Bellak, in the third edition of his manual, published in 1975, examines 23 different approaches to interpreting the TAT, not counting Murray’s scheme and his own (Bellak, 1975). According to some sources, already in the 50s there were more than 30 schemes, and in 1963 B. Murstein compared their number with the number of hairs in Rasputin’s beard. We will focus only on some of the approaches that are the most popular or have made the greatest contribution to the integrated interpretation scheme that is proposed in this manual.

D. Rapaport drew attention to the need to analyze not only the content of stories, but also their formal characteristics - how the subject perceives the image and how he fulfills the requirements of the instructions (Rapaport, 1943). Analysis of formal characteristics made it possible to assess the interindividual stability of certain features and the intraindividual stability of individual parameters of the stories. From this we can conclude, firstly, which signs are diagnostically significant and, secondly, which images and, accordingly, stories are of the greatest significance for the subject. Rapaport drew attention to such indicators as formal implementation of instructions, omission of certain points, excessive detail of stories, omission of significant details, etc.; all these categories will be discussed in detail below, when presenting the interpretative scheme. When analyzing the content characteristics, Rapaport drew attention to the presence of cliché plots characteristic of each TAT picture, which are often given in stories by different people and are in themselves diagnostically insignificant. The only significant deviations from these clichés are the “ideational contents” of the story associated with the emotional sphere of the subject’s personality. (Rapaport, Gill, Sckafer, 1946). Rapaport also identified diagnostic signs characterizing certain mental disorders. A more complete analysis of Rapaport’s scheme and its theoretical basis is given in the book by E.T. Sokolova (1980, pp. 84-92).

J.Rotter (Rotter, 1946) in his interpretation scheme drew attention to such characteristics as the attitude to the world, the characteristics of the main character, in particular, his approach to solving problems. They were also offered a step-by-step sequence of interpreter actions, including three (later five) stages.

The original interpretative scheme was proposed by S. Tomkins (Tomkins, 1947). S. Tomkins identifies four main categories of analysis. 1 . Vectors. Vectors reflect the direction of the character’s behavior, aspirations or feelings and are denoted by prepositions: “on”, “from”, “to”, “with”, “for”, “against”, etc. - 10 vectors in total. The concept of a vector, although in a slightly different version, was already present in Murray’s theory (Murray, 1938), although it was not included in his interpretative scheme. 2. Level. It characterizes what exactly is described in the story: things, events, behavior, intentions, feelings, memories, dreams, etc. - 17 levels in total. S. Tomkins pays especially much attention to level categories, since level analysis makes it possible to reveal the relationship between explicit and latent needs and identify protective mechanisms. The category of level will be discussed in more detail below, when presenting the interpretative scheme. 3. Conditions- any psychological, social or physical circumstances that are not someone else's behavior, desires or aspirations. Conditions are characterized primarily by valence - negative, neutral or positive. 4.Qualifiers- characteristics that clarify vectors, levels and conditions. Qualifiers include timing, probability, intensity, negation, means-ends, and cause-effect relationships. In addition to the four basic categories, S. Tomkins also names the objects of action of vectors, levels and conditions, which can either be present in stories or not. The analysis of the identified categories is carried out separately within each of the four main spheres of relationships identified by S. Tomkins: the sphere of family relations, the sphere of love, sex and marital relations, the sphere of social relations and the sphere of work and professional problems. Among the advantages of S. Tomkins’ scheme, they usually emphasize the introduction of the category of level and division into spheres, as well as the method he proposed for identifying the hidden content of stories based on the rules of inference logic of J. St. Mill (for example, if phenomena A and B are present invariably together under changing other circumstances , which means they are connected by a causal relationship). However, in general, S. Tomkins' system is no less cumbersome than Murray's system, and is more difficult to improve, since it is less compatible with elements of other interpretive schemes.

Interpretive scheme proposed in 1947 by Wyatt (Wyatt, 1947), on the contrary, pursued the goal of creating the most convenient way for explanation and dissemination of the analysis and interpretation of results, using both formal and substantive features and quantitative processing capabilities. Of the 15 variables Wyatt identifies, only a few are worth mentioning here. Firstly, Wyatt, like S. Tomkins, uses the concept of level, filling it, however, with a different content. The following are distinguished: 1) concrete factual level - description of ongoing events; 2) endo-psychic level - description of the internal experiences, thoughts and feelings of the characters; 3) symbolic level (imaginary subjective reality); 4) level of the past and mythology; 5) the level of appearance (characters pretending to be different from what they really are) and 6) the level of convention - a description of alternative possible options. Secondly, Wyatt distinguishes between primary and secondary “focal figures” - characters with whom the subject can simultaneously identify to a greater or lesser extent. Thirdly, the relationships between characters are described on two levels: formal and emotional relationships. The remaining variables he identifies are modifications of categories from Murray and Rapaport's schemes.

An original approach to the interpretation of TAT was proposed by Z. Piotrovsky (Piotrowski, 1950). Z. Piotrovsky rejected the assumption on which the systems of Murray, Tomkins and, to a lesser extent, Rapaport were built, that the hero of the story is a projection of the author, and other characters embody his environment. He considers Wyatt’s assumption more adequate that different characters embody different tendencies of the subject’s personality - conscious and repressed, integrated and dissociated, as well as random. Z. Piotrovsky considers it necessary to apply the rules of psychoanalytic dream interpretation to the TAT analysis in order to distinguish which TAT contents reflect the personality tendencies of the subject, openly manifested in his behavior, and which reflect feelings and ideas that are not manifested in external behavior. Here are the basic rules that Z. Piotrovsky formulates:

1. Actions in TAT stories are less subject to distortion than characters; they can be attributed to other characters if they are unacceptable.

2. Each TAT character, as in dreams, embodies different tendencies of the personality of the subject, who attributes them to the most suitable characters, for example, infantile desires - for a child, attitude towards death - for an old man.

3. The more acceptable the motive is for the consciousness of the subject, the greater the similarity with him of the character to whom this motive is attributed. Less acceptable motivations are attributed to characters of a different gender, age, or even inanimate objects.

4. A single story does not make it possible to extract an accurate interpretation. For example, suicide in one story may only reflect a desire to be alone. The more diverse characters in stories demonstrate a certain tendency, the more likely it is that it is inherent in the personality of the subject.

depending on the accuracy of stimulus identification. 2. The degree of adaptability is also determined by the task or attitude of the subject. 3. The relationship between adaptability and projectivity is also determined by the stable and transient characteristics of the perceiving organism. Projection, accordingly, is defined as “an extreme degree of apperceptive distortion in which the apperceptive mass of past experience, or certain aspects of it, so strongly controls the current perception that it seriously impairs its adaptive side.” (Bellak, 1986, p.25). Domestic developments are so far much more modest. In the first manual published at Moscow University (Workshop, 1972, pp. 221-227), a fragmentary interpretation scheme is given, the main emphasis in which is on formal indicators. At the same time, it was stipulated that the test was not adapted and not standardized, and therefore “the material obtained using this version of the test has no diagnostic value” (ibid., p.227). In the monograph by V.G. Norakidze (1975), Murray’s interpretive scheme is used to process the results, although for the theoretical justification of TAT and meaningful interpretation, the author uses the apparatus of D.N. Uznadze’s attitude theory. The book by E.T. Sokolova (1980) presents a theoretical basis for TAT from the perspective of the activity approach in psychology (written jointly with V.V. Stolin), which was further developed and deepened in her doctoral dissertation (Sokolova, 1991), however, guidelines for analyzing TAT on this basis are reduced to listing five groups of characteristics diagnosed by TAT:

"1. Leading motives, relationships, values.

2. Affective conflicts; their spheres.

3. Methods of conflict resolution: position in a conflict situation, the use of specific defense mechanisms, etc.

4. Individual characteristics of the individual’s affective life: impulsivity-controllability, emotional stability-lability, emotional maturity-infantility.

5. Self-esteem; the ratio of ideas about the real self and the ideal self; degree of self-acceptance" (Sokolova, 1980, p.99).

The only detailed interpretative scheme of TAT in Russian-language literature today is proposed in the manual by V.E. Renge (1979). V.E. Renge, based on a common methodology with E.T. Sokolova (see. Sokolova, Vavilov, Renge, 1976), offers his own version of the activity-theoretical justification of TAT and a grid of diagnostic indicators, which are divided into formal and substantive. A distinctive feature of Renge’s interpretive scheme is a detailed description of the goals of the character (characters) in the story according to several parameters: content, the degree of their realism, the degree of development and means of achievement, as well as the result. In addition to the symptomatic analysis of individual indicators, Renge also offers a syndromic-logical analysis based on the identification of invariant structures common to a number of stories (Renge, 1979).

A brief outline of the main approaches to the theoretical justification and interpretation of TAT in line with projective methodology allows us to assess the ambivalence of the situation around this method: on the one hand, the diversity of approaches and interpretive schemes indicates the attractiveness of the methodology for a variety of applied problems and theoretical orientations, and on the other hand it however, it shows that the technique lacks the degree of standardization of the procedure for processing and analyzing the results, which would allow us to talk about it as a psychodiagnostic tool. J. Rotter in 1947 noted that the TAT in its current state cannot be considered a clinical instrument separate from the person who uses it - the value and validity of the test depends on the experience of the interpreter and his approach to the individual (Buros, 1970, p.467). The authors of later reviews of works devoted to TAT invariably came to similar conclusions. Thus, in 1958, ADJensen stated that in practice few people use all 20 pictures, which

Tests are performed both orally and in writing, both alone and in a group, formal calculations are rarely used, and the only “standards” used in clinical work are the subjective feelings of the psychodiagnostician himself. Jensen concluded that the TAT has only belief-based subjective validity. It merely provides the clinical psychologist with interpretable material that can serve the psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrist (Bums, 1970, p.934). It should be taken into account that the development of TAT coincided with the intensive development of psychometrics and the formulation of psychometric requirements for psychodiagnostic methods - requirements for reliability, validity, and representativeness. These requirements also apply to projective methods, although with some reservations. Therefore, since the late thirties, attempts have been made to substantiate the TAT from the point of view of the named psychometric criteria. These attempts deserve special discussion.

2.2. Psychometric rationale for TAT

The psychometric characteristics of projective methods are not the same as the psychometric characteristics of questionnaire-type methods. Strictly speaking, it is not the test itself that has validity and reliability, but this or that scheme for processing and interpreting the results, or even individual diagnostic tests.

indicators.

Reliability. Already in 1940, publications appeared devoted to assessing the reliability and consistency of assessing TAT results: R. Harrison obtained a correlation value between assessments of emotional stability by two experts of 0.77. In the book by S. Tomkins (Tomkins, 1947) already describes six studies in which correlations between the judgments of different experts varied from 0.30 to 0.96. The spread of these values is explained by differences in the groups of subjects, processing schemes and degree of qualification.

identification of experts. A. Jensen in 1958 recorded 15 studies of this kind, in which correlations ranging from 0.54 to 0.91 were obtained, with an average of 0.77 (Buros, 1970, p.932). Moreover, if Tomkins assesses these values as quite high, Jensen considers agreement values of expert assessments below 0.8 unacceptable. H.-J. Kornadt and H. Zumkli, summarizing an even larger number of studies, conclude that the coefficient of consistency of assessments is directly dependent on the interpretation system used and the method of calculation. In particular, for the most standardized scheme for diagnosing achievement motivation by D. McClelland and for similar standardized schemes for diagnosing other motives (see 2.3), it was possible to obtain consistently reproducible coefficients of consistency of assessments of the order of 0.95 (Komadt, Zumkley, 1982, pp.290-291).

Another aspect of reliability is test-retest reliability, which is a measure of the reproducibility of results across repeated tests. G. Murray believed that one should not expect high reliability from TAT, since the stories reflect not only the stable personality traits of the subject, but also his fleeting moods and current life situation (Murray, 1943). The stability of the results over time largely depends, of course, on the personality of the subject. However, in group experiments, S. Tomkins received a correlation coefficient of 0.80 when retested after two months, 0.60 after six months and 0.50 after ten months (Tomkins, 1947, p.6). The results obtained by R. Sanford are close to this: 0.46 when retested at yearly intervals, despite the fact that the subjects in this study were children and adolescents (ibid., p.7). In both cases, the object of calculation and analysis was needs or themes.

In a number of later studies, in which needs were also the object of study, fairly high rates of test-retest reliability were obtained even over a time interval measured in years

(cm. Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.292). These results, however, are unlikely to be generalizable, since they vary significantly for different TAT pictures and for different needs (range from 0 to 0.94). Approximately the same picture is given by studies in which the object of comparison was not indicators of needs, but holistic conclusions about the severity of characteristics such as aggressiveness or achievement motivation in the subjects.

The test-retest reliability of the TAT (test-resistance) depends on changes in the psychological situation of the subjects, which is confirmed by experiments with artificial influence on this situation. Thus, strong criticism of the subjects’ stories leads to a significant increase in signs of aggression. In another study, experimentally induced frustration led to a decrease in superiority themes in stories, an increase in aggression, and a decrease in the number of descriptions of emotional states. These changes, however, were observed only in a group of poorly adapted subjects; well-adapted individuals found only an increase in the number of descriptions of emotional states (Tomkins, 1947, pp.8-9).

The requirement for internal consistency of parts of the test is apparently not applicable in the case of the TAT, since different pictures (tables) of the TAT are intended to actualize different motivational structures; Moreover, according to some data, the order in which the tables are presented affects the results obtained. However, attempts have been made to measure the correlations of some variables for the two halves of the test. The results obtained range from 0.07 to 0.45, some of them reach an acceptable level of significance (see. Komadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.293).

Norms. Collecting normative data related to TAT stories was not considered to be particularly necessary, although Rapaport et al. (Rapaport, Gill, Schafer, 1946) emphasized the need to separate individual ideational contents from stereotypes (clichés) by analyzing the interindividual consistency of stories. However, there is practically no normative data, although

today the opinion about their uselessness is recognized as erroneous (Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, pp.294-295). For example, it is customary to judge perceptual distortions and omission of details (see Chapter 4) based on stereotypical ideas about “normal” perception. However, some anecdotal statistics do not support these generally accepted beliefs. For example, in Table 3 VM, up to 50% of respondents do not see (do not mention in the story) a pistol; the vast majority see a woman on this table, not a man, etc. Therefore, norms are necessary in principle, although it is not clear, firstly, in relation to which categories of characteristics it is essential to have them and, secondly, to what extent differentiated group norms are necessary.

Validity. The main difficulty in validating TAT is determining its criteria. How can we talk about the validity of the TAT if it is not clearly defined what exactly the TAT is supposed to measure? It is clear that we cannot talk about the validity of the TAT in general; we can only talk about the validity of certain indicators in the context of certain interpretive schemes and taking into account a specific validation technique. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the so-called breadth-precision dilemma (Cronbach, 1970): the wider and more generalized range of characteristics a given method reflects, the more difficult it is to achieve accuracy in their measurement and vice versa. In relation to the TAT, this means that the more complex the diagnostic judgment and the more generalized the assessment, the more difficult it is to determine the validity of this judgment.

Various attempts to substantiate the TAT provide results that are satisfactory from the point of view of its practical application, but insufficient for a final judgment on validity. Thus, it was found that at least 30% of the stories contain elements of the biography or life experience of the subjects. The TAT stories also agree well with the data from dream analysis and the results of the Rorschach test. (Tomkins, 1947, s.Yu-12; Komadt, Zumkley, 1982, pp.299-304).

Convincing results are provided by studies whose authors try to use TAT data to restore personality traits, elements of biography, level of intelligence, attitudes and personal conflicts. The percentage of agreement between these conclusions and medical history data and clinical descriptions reached an average of 82.5% when the examination was conducted in person and 74% when the examination data was “blindly” processed by another person. Evidence in favor of the validity of TAT is also provided by significant differences in some indicators between clinical groups of different nosologies. This, however, applies only to groups with homogeneous, “pure” symptoms; TAT is not applicable for differential diagnosis in complex mixed cases.

Summarizing the analysis of data on the validity of TAT, S. Tomkins concludes that the validity of conclusions drawn on the basis of TAT data depends not only on the method itself, but also, no less, on the maturity of psychological theory, its ability to offer adequate methods and techniques for data interpretation (Tomkins, 1947, p.20). In accordance with this conclusion, more recent results have resulted in significantly higher validity rates for TAT variants specifically designed for the diagnosis of individual motifs, compared to the classic clinical TAT. In particular, a number of data indicate the sensitivity of the method to the situational dynamics of motives (situational validity). In a longitudinal study by D. McClelland, his version of the TAT produced results that correlated with future success in entrepreneurship, coping with life challenges, and some psychosomatic symptoms (blood pressure) 15-20 years later (predictive validity). Finally, only for the version of D. McClelland and similar later modifications it was possible to obtain significant and stable correlations between test indicators (severity of the achievement motive) and characteristics of real behavior, such as academic success, success in performance.

various experimental tasks, subsequently college grades and professional success (Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, pp.307-310).

Summing up a brief review of attempts to psychometrically substantiate the TAT and the problems that arise, we can only state that the question of the psychometric validity of the TAT remains open to this day. “There are still enthusiastic clinicians and doubting statisticians.” (C.Adcock; cm. Bums, 1970, p. 1338). Doubting statisticians point out that the TAT has not been standardized in any satisfactory way for many decades and is hardly possible at all; Although the TAT is an interesting method that has brought many benefits, in its classical clinical version by G. Murray it cannot be considered any satisfactory test in the strict sense of the word. It can be objected that the standards of classical psychometrics are not applicable to this method. L. Bellak identified several methodological limitations that do not allow the requirements of psychometric validity and reliability to be presented to the TAT, or at least significantly limit the validity of these requirements. First, psychometrics presupposes the stability of measurement conditions, which is impossible when we are dealing with dynamic forces in the depths of the personality. Secondly, the clinical syndromes themselves, which are identified by projective tests, are not clearly defined. Finally, thirdly, the explicit content manifested in tests and the hidden personal variables reflected in it are not directly related to each other. This relationship is mediated by the intervening variable, ego. Due to these three circumstances, it is not entirely correct to demand that projective tests meet strict criteria of reliability and validity (Bellak, 1986, pp.XVIII-XIX). A more adequate criterion, according to Bellak, is considered to be “intratest validity” - the repeatability of individual signs and integral patterns in different stories according to the TAT (ibid., p.41).

However, as we have seen, the classical theory of projection, proposed by many enthusiastic clinicians as an alternative to classical psychometrics, is also not convincing enough in this case. S. Adcock (C.Adcock; cm. Bums, 1970, p. 1338) pointed out that the degree of projectivity of stories is problematic in each individual case and must be determined with the help of additional evidence; Moreover, empirical data refuting the thesis about the need to identify the subject with the character of the story is at least as weighty as the data confirming this thesis (Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, pp.312-313). Returning to the already cited thought of S. Tomkins that the possibility of validating conclusions using TAT depends primarily on the maturity of psychological theory, we can state that both the classical theory of projection and classical testology turned out to be only limitedly suitable for substantiating the principle and effectiveness of work TAT. At the same time, we have already referred to versions of TAT built on the basis of interactionist methodology, which is not reducible to either the projective approach or empirical psychometrics, but best corresponds to the general criteria of both approaches. The most convincing example of the implementation of this methodology in theory and development of methods is the direction of research on achievement motivation (D. McClelland, R. Atkinson, etc.).

It is advisable to dwell on this methodology in a little more detail.

2.3. Interactionist-activist

approach to theoretical justification

TAT: from personality to situation

Both personality projection theory and differential psychometrics are based on the "at first glance" model of explanation. (Heckhausen, 1986, p. 18), according to which the peculiarities of human behavior stem primarily from

one of its inherent properties, or personal dispositions. These same stable personal properties - we can call them needs, defenses or traits - should, in theory, be reflected in fantasy products, in particular in TAT stories. Projection theory (Sokolova, 1980) substantiates this thesis, and psychometric methodology clearly relies on it, putting forward its criteria for the quality of diagnostic techniques.

At the same time, there are quite numerous studies in which the assumption about the direct dependence of the severity of a certain trait according to TAT data on its actual severity in an individual is not only not confirmed, but in some cases the dependence turns out to be inverse (Komadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.276). An attempt to explain these paradoxical dependencies was made from the perspective of the theory of perceptual defense: repressed motives, contrary to Murray’s opinion, do not appear in the TAT, since the pictures that stimulate them simultaneously stimulate defense mechanisms at the perceptual level. However, the question arises: how to distinguish whether the absence of a certain motif in a story is a consequence of its repression, a consequence of its weak expression, or a consequence of the dominance of a more relevant motive. An additional criterion is needed, such as the tendency of a given picture to actualize one or another motive. This criterion, however, is of little help in the case of thematically ambiguous paintings. Studies have established completely different dependencies (direct, inverse, U-shaped and zero) of the manifestation of motives in the TAT on their real expression for different motives, different pictures and different subjects, and the measure of acceptance/repression of motives turns out to be unable to explain the existing differences.

One of two things remains: either to recognize the TAT as invalid and, accordingly, an unsuitable diagnostic tool, which comes into clear contradiction with its intuitively perceived information content, as well as with a number of empirical confirmations of its validity, given by

mentioned in the previous paragraph, or recognize the explanatory scheme “at first glance” as inadequate in relation to it and look for a new theoretical justification that is better consistent with the facts.

The search for this new justification followed the path of criticism of the concept of stable personality traits, on which traditional psychometrics is based. According to the "second look" (Heckhausen, 1986) human behavior is determined primarily by situational, extra-personal factors. The second view in its pure form existed very briefly, if it existed at all, and turned into the “third view”, according to which personal factors still exist and they are the reason for different behavior in situations that encourage one specific type of behavior. At the same time, personal factors are not reduced to habitual behavioral tendencies, but also include tendencies to perceive, evaluate and categorize situations in a certain way (see. Heckhausen, 1986, p.25). This third view is an interactionist* approach in its various variants (see Heckhausen, 1986, pp. 26-32) - is qualitatively different from the personalist explanation “at first glance” and from the situationist explanation “at second glance”. If the first two one-sided “views” are based on the principle of causal determination of behavior, then the third opens up the possibility of transition to a fundamentally different, activity-based model of explanation. “If, say, motives are considered (and recorded through TAT) as “determinants of behavior,” then they are not understood as “monolithic” factors; on the contrary, the decisive role is increasingly played by individual goals, cognitive processes such as anticipation and assessment of prospects for success and finally, the attribution of reasons and intentions. After McClelland, motives ceased to be understood as situational

* Interactionism as an approach to explaining behavior by the influence of personal and situational factors should not be confused with interactionist theory in social psychology.

invariant conditions of activity, although they act as relatively stable personal constants. Whether this motive will be actualized and whether it will determine the activity depends on the interpretation of the situation, on the prospects for the success of the corresponding activity in the corresponding situation, etc. (Komadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.ZZZ).

David McClelland owns not only the first theoretical model of human motivation that goes beyond the causal model of behavior determination, but also the most developed approach to date to constructing a theoretically and psychometrically sound version of the TAT.

2.3.1. D. McClelland's theory of motivation and his approach to measuring motives

D. McClelland identifies four main elements and several additional elements in the structure of behavioral motivation (McClelland, 1987, pp.173-175). The first element is a request from the situation, which stimulates the actualization of certain motives. The request may take the form of a stimulus, a direct appeal from the outside, or spatiotemporal parameters associated with certain forms of activity (“it’s time for lunch”). Queries, however, do not automatically update motives. The second element of the situation is the valence (incentive) that this request has. McClelland characterizes this valence as a time-stable external factor related to the situation. The meaning of highlighting this element is that a request or stimulus has the ability to actualize motives due to the fact that it correlates with some emotional-motivational system, serves as a sign of a qualitatively certain type of satisfaction or, on the contrary, frustration. We can say that valence determines the meaning of the request. The third element of the motivational structure is the motive itself as a stable personal disposition. McCle-

2 D. Leontyev

Land defines motivational disposition as a stable orientation (concern) towards a specific goal state, which encourages, orients and selects behavior (ibid., With. 183). Motive mediates the influence of valence on actual motivation: if the personal motive is weak, then even a strong relevant request with high valence will not awaken the corresponding desire. Actualized situational motivation - the fourth of the main elements of McClelland's scheme - is also not the direct cause of action. At this stage, it is necessary to take into account additional elements - the presence of appropriate skills, knowledge of social values that determine the degree of acceptability of the desired behavior and, finally, the ability to act in a certain way. “Requests... taking the form of valence, lead - if they are superimposed on existing motives-dispositions - to the actualization of motivation, which, combined with knowledge of values, skills and abilities, generates an impulse to action, which, combined with opportunities, generates action" (ibid., With. 174).

Based on this model, McClelland began a lot of work in the late forties to create methods for measuring individual motives based on the TAT. This work was built, as McClelland and his co-authors wrote in 1949, "on the natural assumption that imagined behavior is governed by the same basic principles as any other... If we assume that the principles governing imagined behavior are no different from principles governing practical action... then the method used in this case turns out to be a more subtle and flexible means of substantiating and disseminating these principles than the usual method of studying practical actions" (quoted from: Heckhausen, 1986, p.264). At the same time, serious criticism of McClelland was caused by the vagueness of dividing different needs among themselves, the optionality of some signs that Murray

included in the definition of needs (McClelland, 1987, p.66). For a clear diagnosis of the severity of individual motives-dispositions, “the presented pictures had to thematically correspond to certain motives, stimulating in their interpreter the corresponding motivational states that could manifest themselves in the recognition and interpretation of the pictures. In order to create in the subject a motivational state thematically related to the situation reproduced in the picture , the subject was asked to compose a detailed story based on the picture presented, for which he had to completely switch to the depicted situation, think about what was happening in it and could happen next, imagine what the people depicted were thinking and feeling, etc. If in the stories different subjects, using essentially the same pictures, the motivational theme is manifested in different ways, then, all other things being equal, this allows us to judge the differences in the corresponding motive" (Heckhausen, 1986, p.259).

Based on these principles, McClelland developed a version of the TAT to measure the achievement motive. McClelland's TAT paintings, compared to Murray's TAT, bring up the theme of achievement much more clearly. The scoring system is based on content analysis of the frequency of mention of individual diagnostically significant categories in stories. In many ways, this formalized processing system contributed to the fact that, in terms of their psychometric characteristics, the McClelland TAT and its analogues are significantly superior to the classical version of the TAT. At the same time, the clear advantages of McClelland's technique indicate the greater adequacy of his theoretical approach to substantiating TAT, as well as the promise of the method of thematic apperception.

2.3.2. Further theoretical development

1958), a TAT picture depicting a certain social situation contains certain key cues that evoke expectations of satisfaction of a particular motive. These expectations involve weighing the positive and negative consequences of the relevant motive and situation of action. The situational motivation that arises on this basis gives rise in TAT stories to a description of imaginary circumstances that cause a feeling of satisfaction or frustration. The motives that appear in stories, according to Atkinson, are no different from the motives that operate in similar real-life situations. In order for the strength of a motive to be determined from the production of fantasy, it is necessary, firstly, that the examination situation itself does not actualize a certain motive and, secondly, that the set of paintings thematically corresponds to various aspects of the manifestation of the motive being studied. Not only the degree of expression of the motive, but also its substantive organization has individual specificity; different pictures will, accordingly, evoke expectations of different strengths and different contents, therefore, only by summing up the results from several pictures can these differences be leveled out.

Atkinson's views were further developed and clarified in the theory of motivational activation by R. Fuchs (see. Fuchs, 1976). R. Fuchs answers the question that remained unclear for Atkinson - how the features contained in the TAT paintings give rise to certain expectations. Fuchs experimentally showed that, like a conditioned reflex, there is also a process of conditioned activation of emotions through the objective content associated with these emotions. The activating function of stimuli is a mechanism for their generalization. As for TAT in particular, some details of paintings act as stimuli of this kind that activate the emotions associated with them, and this process is beyond conscious control. The activated sense of significance is not initially cognitively integrated with the situation, but it generates expectations associated with

with the significance of the corresponding stimuli and determining the interpretation of the situation. Only then does reintegration of the complex motivational system in McClelland's terms occur. A willingness to tell stories facilitates this reintegration process. At the same time, however, competing motives associated with an activated emotion or with the examination situation can give rise to quite complex processes: repression, symbolization, etc. The final result is almost impossible to predict.

A new round of theoretical justification was proposed by J. Atkinson in his works of the 70s (for example, Atkinson, Birch, 1970). Atkinson assumes that the organism exists in a continuous stream of activity; the main problem that arises is to explain the transition from one activity to another, their connection. Therefore, Atkinson introduces the idea of forces that increase or decrease tendencies to act in one direction or another. Atkinson explains the change from one activity to another by a change in the balance of forces of various motivational tendencies. For TAT, this means that since the pattern of actualized motives changes over time, different paintings may reflect different constellations of motives, and when assessing different paintings, different values of the strength of motivational tendencies are obtained, regardless of the specifics of the paintings. It follows that the TAT can be considered a reliable tool for measuring motive strength, despite its low internal consistency.

From the above it is clear that the theories of D. McClelland, R. Fuchs, J. Atkinson and some other authors not mentioned in this review represent a detailed and deep justification for the diagnostic value of TAT. TAT turns out to be a unique diagnostic tool in its capabilities, in particular, due to the fact that it allows you to analyze the cognitive processes that take place when working with imaginary situations, such as assessing the situation, planning actions,

causal attribution, expectation of success, etc. As confirmation of the validity and reliability of TAT in a new theoretical context, it is proposed to consider, first of all, situational validity and evidence of the possibility of influencing motives with the help of special training programs (Kornadt, Zumkley, 1982, p.271).

The activity-semantic theory of motivation, developed in line with the activity approach in psychology and which has already given rise to several original attempts to theoretically substantiate TAT, is in good agreement with the interactionist-activity concepts of D. McClelland, J. Atkinson, H. Heckhausen, R. Fuchs and others. (Renge, 1979; Sokolova, 1980, 1991; Leontyev, 1989a).

2.3.3. Activity-semantic approach to substantiation of tat

Thematic apperception test was developed at the Harvard Psychological Clinic by Henry Murray and his colleagues in the second half of the 30s.

History of the creation of the technique

The thematic apperception test was first described in an article by K. Morgan and G. Murray in 1935. In this publication, TAT was presented as a method for studying imagination, allowing one to characterize the personality of the subject due to the fact that the task of interpreting depicted situations, which was posed to the subject, allowed him to fantasize without visible restrictions and contributed to the weakening of psychological defense mechanisms. The TAT received its theoretical justification and a standardized scheme for processing and interpretation a little later, in the monograph “Personality Research” by G. Murray. The final TAT interpretation scheme and the final (third) edition of the stimulus material were published in 1943.

Adaptations and modifications of the technique

We can talk about TAT in at least two meanings. In a narrow sense, this is a specific diagnostic technique developed by G. Murray; in a broad sense, this is a method of personal diagnostics, the embodiment of which is not only the Murray test, but also a number of its variants and modifications, developed later, as a rule, for more specific and narrow diagnostic or research tasks.

TAT options for different age groups

The most famous technique from this group is Children's Apperception Test (CAT) L.Bellaca. The first version of CAT (1949) consisted of 10 paintings depicting situations in which the heroes were anthropomorphized animals. In 1952, an additional series (CAT-S) was developed, the pictures of which covered a number of situations not taken into account in the first version of CAT. The technique was intended for children 3-10 years old and was based on the assumption that children of this age find it easier to identify with animals than with human figures. Experimental data, however, refuted this assumption, and Bellak, although he did not immediately agree with his criticism, created a parallel version with human figures (SAT-N) in 1966.

Comparative studies did not find significant differences between the results of the “animal” and “human” forms of the test. Replacing animal figures with human ones reduces the degree of ambiguity of images. Bellak himself considers a high degree of uncertainty to be an absolute advantage, but some authors dispute this opinion. In processing the Children's Apperception Test, Bellak uses the same basic categories as in processing the TAT, emphasizing that, where possible, the test should be given as a game rather than a test.

Michigan Drawing Test (MRI) intended for children 8-14 years old. It consists of 16 tables depicting realistic situations (one table is a blank white field). As in Murray's TAT, some of the MRI tables (8) are presented to subjects of both sexes, and some are different for boys and girls (4 each). The main subject of diagnosis: nine problem areas, such as conflicts in the family, at school, conflicts with authorities, problems of aggression, etc. Unlike TAT, MRI images are more realistic and do not contain excessive uncertainty. The tension index, calculated based on the test results, differs significantly between normally adapted and maladjusted children. Like the CAT, the MPT has fairly good psychometric properties, although it is not considered to be sufficiently objective.

Test of stories based on drawings P. Symonds (SPST) was created in 1948 and is intended for testing adolescents from 12 to 18 years old; originally developed for research purposes. Includes 20 tables with images of relevant situations. Processing of the results is based on an assessment of the comparative frequency of different topics. This test is not widely used. The images themselves look decidedly dated; There is no evidence of any advantage of the Symonds test over the Murray TAT. J. Kagan expressed the opinion that the optimal test for examining adolescents would be a mixed test, including individual images from the Murray TAT, MRI and SPST.

Options for the elderly. In the seventies, attempts were made to create versions of the TAT for older people: the Gerontological Apperception Test (GAT) by Wolk and Wolk and the Senior Apperception Test (SAT) by L. Bellak and S. Bellak. Both of these tests generally fell short of expectations; It turned out that depicting older people in pictures does not increase their diagnostic value.

Hand drawn apperception test(PAT) was developed in 1974 by Sobczyk in order to study the mechanisms of projection in a simplified version in comparison with the original technique. In this case, much more primitive (and therefore universal) pictures are used as stimulus material. PAT is a modification of TAT in the sense that the ideas of projection and identification underlying the Murray test have found their application in the new technique.

TAT options for different ethnocultural groups

S. Thompson TAT for African Americans (T-TAT). The T-TAT was created in 1949 as a parallel version of the Murray TAT, designed to survey black Americans. Thompson assumed that it would be easier for them to identify with black characters. Murray's 10 TAT tables were revised accordingly, one was eliminated, and others were kept unchanged. The available data are quite contradictory, but generally do not support the hypothesis about the advantages of this option when working with African Americans. However, it is generally accepted that this test is useful for studying racist attitudes and stereotypes in people of both white and black skin color.

TAT for Africans. This technique differs from T-TAT in the content of the paintings, which is focused on traditional African culture to the extent that one can speak generally about it. The latter circumstance was noted by critics who emphasized the existence of cultural differences between individual regions, peoples and tribes, as a result of which for some the proposed version will be more and for others less adequate. The set includes 22 tables, 8 of them for men and women and 6 general. When conducting it, it is considered necessary that the experimenter also be an African, otherwise the answers will be stereotypical and role-based. The order in which the tables are presented is given little importance. The examination ends with a survey, during which, in particular, the subjects must remember the pictures - which pictures are reproduced is considered diagnostically significant. The South African Picture Analysis Test (SAPAT) is intended for children aged 5 to 13 years. The test materials include 12 paintings in which not only ordinary people act, but also kings and queens, gnomes, elves and fairies, as well as humanized animals. The justification of such a construction of the test is questionable, although the authors of the test, P. Nel and A. Pelser, proceeded from data from a survey of children.

There is information about versions of TAT developed for American Indians, Cubans, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, etc. Semenoff in his book examines in detail the methodological problems associated with the use of TAT in different cultures.

TAT options for solving various applied problems

Vocational Apperception Test (VAT) includes 8 tables in the male version and 10 in the female version depicting situations of professional activity. The processing scheme involves identifying indicators of motives and attitudes relevant to five professional areas. The test has satisfactory psychometric properties.

Test of Group Projection (TGP) includes 5 tables and is designed to assess group dynamics. Group members should work together to create stories using the tables. The merits of this test are not obvious and do not have any empirical support. The L. Jackson Family Attitudes Test (TFA) is intended for children from 6 to 12 years old. The options for boys and girls are completely different and include 7 tables each with images of critical family situations. The interpretation of the results is quite free; there is no formalized processing system, as well as data on validity and reliability.

Family Relations Indicator (FRI) developed in line with family psychiatry. The set consists of 40 tables, but their selection in a specific survey situation depends not only on the gender of the subject, but also on the family structure (son/daughter, son and daughter). The purpose of the technique is to obtain as complete a description of family relationships as possible. The images are not naturalistic, but schematized. Reliability and validity data are insufficient; however, opinions on the test as a whole are divided.

School Apperceptive Method (SAM) includes 22 drawings depicting typical school situations and is intended for school psychologists. There are no data on reliability and validity, which raises doubts about the advantages of the test over other methods.

Educational Apperception Test (EAT) differs from the previous one in that it uses naturalistic photographs, and the range of topics covered is somewhat narrower. At the same time, there is no data to compare it with SAM or other tests.

School Anxiety Test (SAT) includes 10 tables covering five possible classes of anxiety in school situations. The selection of paintings was made on the basis of expert assessments. The author of the test, E. Huslein, positively assesses its reliability and validity, but additional confirmation is needed.

TAT variants for measuring individual motives

This section deals with the most standardized versions of the TAT, developed in line with the interactionist paradigm and intended to measure the severity of individual motivational dispositions. This group of methods has significantly higher rates of validity and reliability compared to both the Murray TAT and all its other modifications.

TAT for diagnosing achievement motivation by D. McClelland is the first and most famous of the methods of this group. The test material includes four slides depicting situations related to the topic of achievement. Two of them were borrowed from Murray's TAT, two were created additionally. The technique can be presented in a group mode. Test takers must write a story for each picture, answering four questions:

1) What is happening in the picture, who are the people depicted in it?
2) What led to this situation?
3) What are the thoughts and desires of the people depicted in the picture?
4) What happens next?

The stories are analyzed from the point of view of the presence in them of signs of the theme of achievement. These signs include the need for achievement, positive and negative goal expectations (anticipations), instrumental activity aimed at achieving the goal, internal and external obstacles, external support, positive and negative emotional states arising from success or failure, and the general theme of achievement. One point is scored for each of these characteristics; the sum of points determines the overall severity of the need for achievement. Using this technique, which does not claim to be a test, many different results have been obtained that confirm its rich capabilities and psychometric validity.

TAT for diagnosing achievement motivation by H. Heckhausen differs from D. McClelland’s version in that H. Heckhausen theoretically and experimentally separated two independent tendencies in achievement motivation: hope for success and fear of failure. H. Heckhausen's technique includes 6 paintings; the instructions are more neutral. For each of the two motivational tendencies, its own system of diagnostically significant categories has been identified, which partially coincide with the categories of D. McClelland’s system.

Formalized versions of TAT are also known for diagnosing the motivation of power (D. Winter), affiliation (J. Atkinson) and some others. In our country, a scheme has been developed for diagnosing altruistic personality attitudes based on the standard TAT.

Theoretical basis

Procedure

Situation and atmosphere of the survey

A full examination using TAT rarely takes less than 1.5-2 hours and is usually divided into two sessions, although individual variations are possible. With relatively short stories with a small latent time, all 20 stories can be completed in an hour or a little over an hour (1 session). The opposite situation is also possible - long thoughts and long stories, when two sessions are not enough, and you have to arrange 3-4 meetings. In all cases when the number of sessions is more than one, an interval of 1-2 days is made between them. If necessary, the interval may be longer, but should not exceed one week. In this case, the subject should not know either the total number of paintings or the fact that at the next meeting he will have to continue the same work - otherwise he will unconsciously prepare plots for his stories in advance. At the beginning of work, the psychologist lays out no more than 3-4 tables on the table (image down) in advance and then, as needed, takes out the tables one at a time in a pre-prepared sequence from the table or bag. An evasive answer is given to the question about the number of paintings; at the same time, before starting work, the subject must be determined that it will last at least an hour. The subject should not be allowed to look at other tables in advance.

When conducting an examination in two sessions, the procedure is usually divided into two equal parts of 10 paintings, although this is not necessary. It is necessary to take into account the fatigue of the subject and decreased motivation to complete the task. In any case, regardless of the number of sessions, it is strictly not recommended to interrupt the examination before tables 13, 15 and 16 - the next session should not begin with any of them.

The general situation in which the survey is carried out must meet three requirements: 1. All possible interference must be excluded. 2. The subject must feel quite comfortable. 3. The situation and behavior of the psychologist should not actualize any motives or attitudes in the subject.

The first requirement implies that the examination should be carried out in a separate room, into which no one should enter, the phone should not ring, and both the psychologist and the subject should not rush anywhere. The subject should not be tired, hungry or under the influence of passion.

The second requirement implies, firstly, that the subject must sit in a position that is comfortable for him. The optimal position of the psychologist is from the side, so that the subject sees him with peripheral vision, but does not look at the notes. It is considered optimal to conduct the examination in the evening after dinner, when the person is somewhat relaxed and the psychological defense mechanisms that provide control over the content of fantasies are weakened. Before starting work with TAT, it is good to conduct some short and entertaining technique that will help the subject get involved in the work, for example, a drawing of a non-existent animal (Dukarevich, Yanyin, 1990) or a short selection test (Buzin, 1992). Secondly, the psychologist, through his behavior, must create an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance, support, approval of everything that the subject says, while avoiding directing his efforts in a certain direction. S. Tomkins, speaking about the decisive importance of contact with the subject for the success of the examination, points out the individual characteristics that the psychologist must keep in mind: “Some of the subjects need respect, others need sympathy and support for their creative efforts. There are people who respond best to the dominant behavior of the experimenter, but others react to this with negativism or complete withdrawal from the situation. If the subject is in a state of acute anxiety or in another acute state, testing is contraindicated, since the stories will reflect only his current problem..." (Tomkins, 1947 , p.23). In any case, it is recommended to praise and encourage the subject more often (within reasonable limits), while avoiding specific assessments or comparisons. “It is important that the subject has reason to feel an atmosphere of sympathy, attention, good will and understanding on the part of the experimenter” (Murray, 1943, p.3). L. Bellak uses the concept of rapport to characterize the contact between the diagnostician and the subject: “this means that the diagnostician should show interest, but this interest should not be excessive; the subject should not feel like a means of satisfying the curiosity of the psychologist. The psychologist should be friendly, but not excessively, "so as not to cause heterosexual or homosexual panic in the subject. The best atmosphere is one in which the patient feels that he and the psychologist are seriously doing something important together that will help him and is not at all threatening."

The third requirement implies the need to avoid updating any specific motives in a survey situation. It is not recommended to appeal to the abilities of the subject, to stimulate his ambition, to show a pronounced position of an “expert human scientist”, or dominance. The professional qualifications of a psychologist should inspire confidence in him, but in no case should he be placed “above” the subject. When working with a subject of the opposite sex, it is important to avoid unconscious coquetry and stimulation of sexual interest. All of these undesirable influences, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, can significantly distort the results.

Instructions

Work with TAT begins with the presentation of instructions. The subject sits comfortably, determined to work for at least an hour and a half, several tables (no more than 3-4) are ready face down. The instructions consist of two parts. The first part of the instructions must be read verbatim by heart, twice in a row, despite possible protests from the subject. Text of the first part of the instructions:

“I will show you pictures, you look at the picture and, starting from it, make up a story, a plot, a story. Try to remember what needs to be mentioned in this story. You will say what kind of situation you think this is, what kind of moment is depicted in the picture, what is happening to people. In addition, you will say what happened before this moment, in the past in relation to him, what happened before. Then you will say what will happen after this situation, in the future in relation to it, what will happen later. In addition, it must be said what the people depicted in the picture or any of them feel, their experiences, emotions, feelings. And you will also say what the people depicted in the picture think, their reasoning, memories, thoughts, decisions.”

This part of the instructions cannot be changed (with the exception of the form of addressing the subject - “you” or “you” - which depends on the specific relationship between him and the psychologist). M.Z. Dukarevich, who owns this version of the instructions, comments on it as follows. The formula “starting from it” is important due to the fact that our school education system teaches us to write stories based on pictures, but here the task is fundamentally different - not to decipher what is contained in the image, but, starting from it, to imagine something. The word “storytelling” is deliberately used with a diminutive suffix in order to remove associations with the story as a literary form and thereby downplay the significance of the task and ease the internal tension that may arise in the subject. For the same purpose, a synonymous series “story, plot, history” is given. Depending on his individual characteristics, the subject can associate the meaning of the task with any of these three words, which eliminates the risk of misunderstanding the meaning of the task, which is possible if one limits oneself to any one designation.

The instructions contain a selection of five moments that should be present in stories: 1) moment (present), 2) past, 3) future, 4) feelings, 5) thoughts. The verbosity of the instructions and the large number of connecting and dividing phrases serve the purpose of clearly distinguishing these 5 points, while avoiding numbering: “firstly, secondly, etc.” The instructions assume the ability to freely vary the order of presentation. Each of these five moments is also given in the form of a synonymous series, allowing a wide range of individual interpretations and thereby facilitating the projection onto the content of stories of an individual image of the world and individual ways of processing information. So, for example, the series “before this moment, in the past in relation to it, before” opens up the possibility of talking both about the immediate past, measured in hours or minutes, and about the distant, even historical past. The same applies to the future and the rest of the instructions. For example, the word “emotions” means nothing to one person, but the word “feelings” is clear; for another, the word “feelings” refers to something sublime, but the word “experiences” is quite common; for a third, the word “experiences” necessarily means something... it is conflicting and painful, but the word “emotions” is more neutral. Different words have different personal meanings for different people. The use of synonymous series allows one to avoid excessive semantic unambiguity of the situation for the subject and thereby contributes to the projection of his own meanings.

After repeating the first part of the instructions twice, you should state the following in your own words and in any order (the second part of the instructions):

There are no “right” or “wrong” options; any story that follows the instructions is good;
You can tell it in any order. It’s better not to think through the whole story in advance, but to start immediately saying the first thing that comes to mind, and changes or amendments can be introduced later if there is a need for it;
literary processing is not required; the literary merits of the stories will not be assessed. The main thing is to make it clear what we are talking about. Some specific questions can be asked along the way. The last point is not entirely true, since in reality the logic of stories, vocabulary, etc. are among the significant diagnostic indicators.

After the subject confirms that he understood the instructions, he is given the first table. If any of the five main points (for example, the future or the thoughts of the characters) are missing from his story, then the main part of the instructions should be repeated again. The same can be done again after the second story, if not everything is mentioned in it. Starting from the third story, the instructions are no longer recalled, and the absence of certain points in the story is considered as a diagnostic indicator. If the subject asks questions like “Did I say everything?”, then they should be answered: “If you think that’s it, then the story is finished, move on to the next picture, if you think that it’s not, and something needs to be added, then add." Such constructions should be present in all the psychologist’s answers to the subject’s questions: all alternatives are spelled out. A different form of answer will push the subject to a certain decision, which is undesirable.

After finishing the first and second stories, you should ask the subject if there were other options. The question must be asked in the past tense so that the subject does not perceive it as a task. If there were options, they should be written down. After this, it’s worth asking about it again after a while, skipping a few stories, and not returning to it again.

When resuming work at the beginning of the second session, it is necessary to ask the subject if he remembers what to do and ask him to reproduce the instructions. If he correctly reproduces the main 5 points, then you can start working. If some points are missed, you need to remind “You also forgot...”, and then get to work without returning to the instructions.

Murray suggests giving a modified instruction in the second session with an increased emphasis on freedom of imagination: "Your first ten stories were wonderful, but you were too limited by everyday life. I wish you would step away from it and give more freedom to your imagination." It makes sense to give such additional instructions if indeed the first stories were distinguished by obvious constriction and paucity of imagination. Otherwise, it can play a negative role. Here, as in all other cases, it is necessary to focus on the individual characteristics of the subject.

Special instructions are required when working with Table 16 (blank white box). Often it does not confuse the subject, and he gives a full story without additional instructions. In this case, the only thing to do is, at the end of the story, ask to imagine another situation and compose another story. When this is completed, you should ask to do the same for the third time. The fact is that Table 16 reveals the currently significant problems of the subject. However, if psychological defense mechanisms are at work, preventing the free manifestation of personal problems in this story, then this topical issue is repressed in the first story, and manifests itself most clearly in the second and especially in the third. If the protection is not so strong, then the first option will be the most informative.

The subject may, after a pause, begin abstract philosophical discussions about white light or such things as light, purity, etc. In this case, when he finishes these reasonings, he should say: “The point is not that it is white, clean, etc., but that you can imagine any picture in this place, and then work with "She's like everyone else. What do you imagine here?" When the subject gives a description of the situation, he should be asked to write a story. If he begins immediately with a story, after finishing it, the subject should be asked to describe the imaginary picture that served as the basis for the story. Attempts to present some well-known, real-life picture on a white field should be stopped. “This is Repin, and you will compose your own - what would you depict if you were an artist.” In this case, three versions of stories are also required, and philosophizing on the theme of white color does not count.

Finally, a reaction of surprise or even indignation is possible: “Nothing is depicted here!”, “What should I tell you!” In this case, you should wait some time, and if the subject does not begin to compose a story based on the invented picture on his own, he should be given instructions to imagine any picture on this sheet and describe it, and then compose a story based on it. Then ask for the second and third options.

Finally, after completing the story according to the last, twentieth table, Murray recommends going through all the stories written and asking the subject what the sources of each of them were - was the story based on personal experience, on material from books or films read, on the stories of friends, or is it pure fiction. This information does not always provide anything useful, but in a number of cases it helps to separate borrowed stories from the products of the subject’s own imagination and thereby roughly assess the degree of projectivity of each story. Murray also recommends using this interview to stimulate the subject's free associations about constructed stories, however, this goes beyond the scope of the TAT procedure itself and can be used as an additional procedure in an in-depth clinical examination.

Recording results and drawing up a protocol

When examining using TAT, the following must be recorded:

The large amount of information that needs to be recorded gives rise to certain technical difficulties. These difficulties can be avoided by recording stories on a tape recorder and then transcribing them. In this case, directly in the examination situation, the psychologist will have to record only the non-verbal manifestations of the subject and the turns of the pictures, and he can devote himself entirely to maintaining the working atmosphere and contact with the subject and monitoring the progress of the examination. Transcribing the recording will require additional time and effort, but all the necessary information will be preserved without omissions or distortions. The only distortion that may arise in this case is the unwillingness of the subject to speak in front of the microphone. Hidden recording is technically complex and ethically incorrect, so it is worth spending 15-20 minutes to get the subject accustomed to the turned on tape recorder - you can record something together, listen to it, or somehow play with it. After this, you can start working with TAT.

If the psychologist does not have a voice recorder at his disposal (or a laboratory assistant-protocolist), he has to simultaneously record all the information himself and, at the same time, monitor the progress of the examination and interact with the subject. This is impossible without more or less significant loss of information, although there are some recommendations designed to facilitate the work of a psychologist in such a situation, in particular, the above method of slowing down the rate of speech of the subject. Another recommendation concerns the way of recording long pauses during the story. Since it is not the absolute, but the relative length of pauses that is important, you can rhythmically put dashes on the paper when the subject becomes silent. The more lines, the longer the pause.

All recorded information is compiled into a primary protocol. The primary protocol has a single form for both clinical examination and educational or research experience and must contain all the information on the basis of which any person at any time can process and interpret the results according to any interpretative scheme.

The introductory sheet of the protocol (the so-called “header”) should contain both general information required in any testing protocol for any psychodiagnostic method (gender, age, education, profession of the subject, name of the psychologist conducting the examination, date of examination), and a more detailed description the subject (marital status; family members; health status; successes in professional career; main milestones in the biography) and the examination situation (place of examination; exact time; method of recording the results; other features of the situation; attitude of the subject to the examination situation and to the psychologist).

The main part of the protocol records the text of the stories and all other types of information listed above. This protocol is the basis for further work - isolating diagnostic indicators and interpreting examination results.

Interpretation of results

G. Lindzi identifies a number of basic assumptions on which the interpretation of TAT is based. They are quite general in nature and practically do not depend on the interpretation scheme used. The primary assumption is that by completing or structuring an incomplete or unstructured situation, the individual manifests his aspirations, dispositions and conflicts. The following 5 assumptions are related to identifying the most diagnostically informative stories or fragments thereof.

When writing a story, the narrator usually identifies with one of the characters, and that character's desires, aspirations, and conflicts may reflect the desires, aspirations, and conflicts of the narrator.
Sometimes the narrator's dispositions, aspirations, and conflicts are presented in implicit or symbolic form.
Stories have unequal significance for diagnosing impulses and conflicts. Some may contain a lot of important diagnostic material, while others may have very little or no material at all.
Themes that are directly derived from the stimulus material are likely to be less significant than themes that are not directly derived from the stimulus material.
Recurring themes are most likely to reflect the narrator's impulses and conflicts.

Finally, 4 more assumptions relate to inferences from the projective content of stories concerning other aspects of behavior.

Stories can reflect not only stable dispositions and conflicts, but also actual ones related to the current situation.
Stories may reflect events from the subject's past experience in which he did not participate, but witnessed them, read about them, etc. At the same time, the very choice of these events for the story is connected with its impulses and conflicts.
Stories can reflect, along with individual, group and sociocultural attitudes.
The dispositions and conflicts that may be inferred from stories are not necessarily manifest in behavior or reflected in the mind of the storyteller.

In the vast majority of schemes for processing and interpreting TAT results, interpretation is preceded by the isolation and systematization of diagnostically significant indicators based on formalized criteria. V.E. Renge calls this stage of processing symptomological analysis. Based on the data of symptomological analysis, the next step is taken - syndromic analysis according to Renga, which consists of identifying stable combinations of diagnostic indicators and allows us to move on to the formulation of diagnostic conclusions, which represents the third stage of interpretation of the results. Syndromological analysis, unlike symptomological analysis, lends itself very little to any formalization. At the same time, it inevitably relies on formalized data from symptomological analysis.

Stimulus material

Description of stimulus material

The complete set of TAT includes 31 tables, one of which is a blank white field. All other tables contain black and white images with varying degrees of uncertainty, and in many cases the uncertainty concerns not only the meaning of the situation, but also what is actually depicted. TAT, made by typographic method, is printed on white Bristol cardboard; when working with rephotographed TAT, you must remember that suitable images can only be obtained on matte photographic paper; It is important that the dimensions of the tables correspond to the original, the placement of images and fields on them (different tables have fields of different widths), the brightness (saturation) and contrast (blurriness) of the images. It is important that when copying, the images do not become blurrier or clearer, darker or lighter.

The set presented for examination includes 20 tables; their choice is determined by the gender and age of the subject.

TAT can be used starting from the age of 14, however, when working with people aged 14 to 18, the set of tables will be slightly different from the usual set for working with people over 18 years old - tables that most directly address the topics of aggression and sex.

The distinction between “male” and “female” paintings goes back to the concept of identification, which Murray relied on, who believed that the similarity of the subject to the character in the painting (story) by gender, age and other parameters is a condition for the effectiveness of the projection. Although this position did not find experimental confirmation, the separation remained. Apparently, typically male or female situations better actualize motivational tendencies typical for men or women (in terms of the explanatory model of D. McClelland - J. Atkinson), and also better represent life relationships typical for men or women (in terms activity-semantic explanatory model). The table provides a brief description of all the paintings. The symbols VM indicate pictures used when working with men over 14 years old, the symbols GF - with girls and women over 14 years old, the symbols BG - with teenagers from 14 to 18 years of both sexes, MF - with men and women over 18 years old. The remaining pictures are suitable for all subjects. The number of the painting determines its ordinal place in the set.

Table code designation	Description of the image	Typical themes and features that appear in the story
1	The boy looks at the violin lying on the table in front of him.	Attitude towards parents, the relationship between autonomy and submission to external demands, achievement motivation and its frustration, symbolically expressed sexual conflicts.
2	Village scene: in the foreground a girl with a book, in the background a man working in the field, an older woman looking at him.	Family relationships, conflicts with the family environment in the context of the problem of autonomy-subordination. Love triangle. Conflict between the desire for personal growth and a conservative environment. The woman in the background is often perceived as pregnant, which provokes a corresponding theme. A man's muscular figure can provoke homosexual reactions. Gender-role stereotypes. In the Russian context, subjects related to national history and professional self-affirmation often arise.
3BM	On the floor next to the couch is a crouched figure, most likely a boy, and a revolver on the floor next to it.	The perceived gender of a character may indicate latent homosexual attitudes. Problems of aggression, in particular, self-aggression, as well as depression, suicidal intentions.
3GF	A young woman stands near the door, holding out her hand to it; the other hand covers the face.	Depressive feelings.
4	A woman hugs a man by the shoulders; the man seems to be trying to escape.	A wide range of feelings and problems in the intimate sphere: themes of autonomy and infidelity, the image of men and women in general. A half-naked female figure in the background, when she is perceived as a third character, and not as a picture on the wall, provokes plots related to jealousy, a love triangle, and conflicts in the field of sexuality.
5	A middle-aged woman peers through a half-open door into an old-fashioned furnished room.	Reveals the range of feelings associated with the image of the mother. In the Russian context, however, social themes related to personal intimacy, security, and the vulnerability of personal life from prying eyes often appear.
6VM	A short elderly woman stands with her back to a tall young man who has lowered his eyes guiltily.	A wide range of feelings and problems in the mother-son relationship.
6GF	A young woman sitting on the edge of the sofa turns around and looks at a middle-aged man standing behind her with a pipe in his mouth.	The painting was intended to be symmetrical to the previous one, reflecting the father-daughter relationship. However, it is not perceived so unambiguously and can actualize quite different options for relations between the sexes.
7VM	A gray-haired man looks at a young man who stares into space.	Reveals the father-son relationship and the resulting relationship to male authorities.
7GF	A woman sits on a couch next to a girl, talking or reading something to her. A girl with a doll in her hands looks to the side.	Reveals the relationship between mother and daughter, and also (sometimes) to future motherhood, when the doll is perceived as a baby. Sometimes the plot of a fairy tale is inserted into the story, which the mother tells or reads to her daughter, and, as Bellak notes, this fairy tale turns out to be the most informative.
8VM	A teenage boy in the foreground, with a gun barrel visible from the side, and a blurry surgical scene in the background.	Effectively addresses themes related to aggression and ambition. Failure to recognize a gun indicates problems with controlling aggression.
8GF	A young woman sits, leaning on her hand, and looks into space.	Can reveal dreams about the future or current emotional background. Bellak considers all the stories on this table to be superficial, with rare exceptions.
9VM	Four men in overalls lie side by side on the grass.	Characterizes relationships between peers, social contacts, relationships with a reference group, sometimes homosexual tendencies or fears, social prejudices.
9GF	A young woman with a magazine and a purse in her hands looks from behind a tree at another smartly dressed woman, even younger, running along the beach.	Reveals relationships with peers, often rivalry between sisters or conflict between mother and daughter. Can identify depressive and suicidal tendencies, suspicion and hidden aggressiveness, even paranoia.
10	A woman's head on her husband's shoulder.	Relationships between a man and a woman, sometimes hidden hostility towards the partner (if the story is about separation). The perception of the two men in the painting suggests homosexual tendencies.
11	The road goes along the gorge between the rocks. There are obscure figures on the road. The head and neck of a dragon protrudes from the rock.	Actualizes infantile and primitive fears, anxieties, fear of attack, and general emotional background.
12M	A young man lies on a couch with his eyes closed, an elderly man leans over him, his hand extended to the face of the man lying.	Attitude towards elders, towards authorities, fear of dependence, passive homosexual fears, attitude towards a psychotherapist.
12F	A portrait of a young woman, behind her an elderly woman in a headscarf with a strange grimace.	Relationship to mother, although most often the woman in the background is described as the mother-in-law.
12BG	A boat tied to a river bank in a wooded environment. There are no people.	Bellak considers this table useful only in identifying depressive and suicidal tendencies.
13MF	A young man stands with his face covered with his hands, behind him on the bed is a half-naked female figure.	Effectively identifies sexual problems and conflicts in men and women, fear of sexual aggression (in women), feelings of guilt (in men).
13V	A boy sits on the threshold of a hut.	In many ways similar to Table 1, although less effective.
13G	The girl goes up the steps.	Bellak considers this table to be of little use, like other purely teenage TAT tables.
14	Silhouette of a man against the background of an illuminated window opening.	Bellak believes that the figure can also be perceived as female, which indicates the gender identity of the subjects, but our experience does not confirm this - the figure is clearly perceived as male. The table actualizes children's fears (of the dark), suicidal tendencies, general philosophical and aesthetic inclinations.
15	An elderly man with his hands down stands among the graves.	Attitude to the death of loved ones, own fears of death, depressive tendencies, hidden aggression, religious feelings.
16	Clean white table.	Provides rich, versatile material, but only for subjects who do not experience difficulties with verbal expression of thoughts.
17VM	A naked man climbs or descends a rope.	Fears, tendency to flee from danger, homosexual feelings, body image.
17GF	A female figure on a bridge, leaning over the railing, behind are tall buildings and small human figures.	Useful for identifying suicidal tendencies in women.
18VM	The man is grabbed from behind by three hands, the figures of his opponents are not visible.	Identifies anxieties, fear of attack, fear of homosexual aggression, and the need for support.
18GF	A woman had her hands around another woman's throat, seemingly pushing her down the stairs.	Aggressive tendencies in women, conflict between mother and daughter.
19	A vague image of a hut covered with snow.	The benefit is questionable.
20	A lonely male figure at night near a lantern.	As with Table 14, Bellak points out that the figure is often perceived as female, but our experience does not confirm this. Fears, feelings of loneliness, sometimes assessed positively.

The sequence of presentation is very important. The tables differ, firstly, in the specific sphere of life relations that each of them touches on (the first pictures are more universal, familiar, everyday spheres; the last pictures are more specific, individually significant spheres); secondly, by the emotional tone, which is set by the location, poses and faces of people, light and shade, contrasts of the images themselves, etc. and thirdly, in terms of the degree of realism. The first paintings are very realistic, in paintings 8-10 there is a problem of correlating parts of the image with each other and tying them into one whole, in painting 11 there is no character, which causes difficulties in following the instructions, painting 12 is fantastic, paintings 13-15 touch on deeply hidden conflicts , picture 16 is a pure white field, pictures 17-20 are also quite unusual. G. Murray believed that since the first 10 paintings touch on more ordinary topics, and the second 10 - more fantastic ones, the stories in the first 10 paintings should reflect the needs realized in everyday behavior, and in the second 10 paintings - repressed or sublimated desires. However, no experimental confirmation of this was obtained. However, the same feature may have different meanings when it appears in the first or in the last stories. This, as well as the fact that some paintings actualize certain conflicts and affects, while others “extinguish” them, justifies the need to strictly observe the sequence of presentation of the paintings. Using an incomplete set is also undesirable. It may be a consequence of a lack of time, but there is a high risk of obtaining one-sided results, in which some aspects of the subject’s personality will manifest themselves disproportionately, while others will not appear at all. On the other hand, there are authoritative opinions in favor of narrowing the set of paintings. A. Hartman conducted a special survey of 90 professionals who ranked TAT tables according to the degree of their usefulness for diagnosis. The agreement between the estimates was very high. Based on these estimates, he identified a basic set, which includes 8 tables: 1, 2, 3VM, 4, 6VM, 7VM, 13MF, 8VM. L. Bellak, based on his personal experience, also believes that for an individual examination it is enough to limit yourself to 10-12 tables.

This volume, from his point of view, is optimal and allows the entire examination to be completed in one session. Tables necessary for examining any man: 1, 2, 3VM, 4, 6VM, 7VM, 11, 12M, 13MF; for women, the basic set includes 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6GF, 7GF, 9GF, 11, 13MF. L. Bellak recommends adding several other tables to them, depending on those personal problems, the manifestation of which the diagnostician can foresee.

Cards

Literature

Leontyev D.A. Thematic apperception test. 2nd ed., stereotypical. M.: Smysl, 2000. - 254 p.
Sokolova E.T. Psychological research of personality: projective techniques. - M., TEIS, 2002. – 150 p.

PAT is a compact modified version of G. Murray's Thematic Apperception Test 1, which takes little time for examination and is adapted to the working conditions of a practical psychologist. A completely new stimulus material has been developed, which consists of contour plot pictures. They schematically depict human figures.

Murray's original test is a set of black and white tables with photographs of paintings by American artists. The pictures are divided into 10 male (intended for examining men), 10 female (intended for examining women) and 10 general. There are a total of 20 pictures in each set.

In addition, there is a children's set of pictures (CAT test), represented by 10 pictures, some of which are also included in the adult version of the technique.

TAT is one of the most in-depth personality tests 2. The absence of rigidly structured stimulus material creates the basis for a free interpretation of the plot by the subject, who is asked to write a story for each picture, using his own life experience and subjective ideas. The projection of personal experiences and identification with any of the heroes of the composed story allows us to determine the sphere of conflict (internal or external), the relationship between emotional reactions and rational attitude to the situation, the background of mood, the position of the individual (active, aggressive, passive or passive), the sequence of judgments, the ability to plan one’s activities, the level of neuroticism, the presence of deviations from the norm, difficulties in social adaptation, suicidal tendencies, pathological manifestations and much more. The great advantage of the technique is the non-verbal nature of the presented material. This increases the number of degrees of choice for the subject when creating stories.

During the research process, the person being examined outlines his stories (one, two or more) for each picture for 2–3 hours. The psychologist carefully records these statements on paper (or using a tape recorder), and then analyzes the subject’s oral creativity, identifies unconscious identification, identification of the subject with one of the characters in the plot and transfers his own experiences, thoughts and feelings into the plot (projection).

Frustrating situations are closely related to the specific environment and circumstances that can follow from the corresponding picture, either contributing to the fulfillment of the needs of the heroes (or hero), or preventing it. When determining significant needs, the experimenter pays attention to the intensity, frequency and duration of the subject’s fixation of attention on certain values repeated in different stories.

The analysis of the data obtained is carried out mainly at a qualitative level, as well as with the help of simple quantitative comparisons, which allows us to assess the balance between the emotional and rational components of the personality, the presence of external and internal conflict, the sphere of broken relationships, the position of the individual - active or passive, aggressive or passive ( in this case, a ratio of 1:1, or 50 to 50%, is considered as the norm, and a significant advantage in one direction or another is expressed in ratios of 2:1 or more).

Noting separately the different elements of each plot, the experimenter summarizes the answers reflecting a tendency to clarify (a sign of uncertainty, anxiety), pessimistic statements (depression), incompleteness of the plot and lack of perspective (uncertainty in the future, inability to plan it), the predominance of emotional responses (increased emotivity) etc. Special themes present in large numbers in the stories are death, serious illness, suicidal intentions, as well as disrupted sequence and poor logical coherence of plot blocks, the use of neologisms, reasoning, ambivalence in assessing “heroes” and events, emotional detachment, diversity of perception of pictures, stereotypy can serve as serious arguments in identifying personal disintegration.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

A simplified version of the thematic apperception test is the one we developed. PAT method(drawn apperception test). It is convenient for studying the personal problems of a teenager. With the help of identification and projection mechanisms, deep-seated experiences that are not always controllable by consciousness are revealed, as well as those aspects of internal conflict and those areas of disturbed interpersonal relationships that can significantly influence the behavior of a teenager and the educational process.

Stimulus material techniques (see Fig. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ) presented 8th contour drawings depicting 2, less often 3, people. Each character is depicted in a conventional manner: neither his gender, nor age, nor social status is clear. At the same time, the poses, the expression of gestures, and the particular arrangement of the figures allow us to judge that each of the pictures either depicts a conflict situation, or two characters are involved in complex interpersonal relationships. Where there is a third participant or observer of events, his position can be interpreted as indifferent, active or passive.

The stimulus material of this technique is even less structured than in TAT. The era, cultural and ethnic characteristics are not visible here, there are no social shades that are clearly visible in the TAT pictures (subjects’ responses to some of them: “American soldiers in Vietnam”, “Trophy film”, “Hairstyles and foreign style fashion of the 20s " etc.). This clearly interferes with the subject’s direct perception, distracts, makes it possible to produce cliché-type answers (taken from films or other well-known sources) and contributes to the subject’s closeness in the experiment.

The drawn apperception test, due to its brevity and simplicity, has found application in examining schoolchildren and in family counseling, especially in conflict situations related to the problem of difficult adolescents. It is not recommended to use the technique on children under 12 years of age.

The positive side of the PAT test is that examination using this technique can be carried out simultaneously on a whole group of children, including in the classroom.

PROGRESS OF THE INVESTIGATION

The examination is carried out as follows.

The subject (or a group of subjects) is given the task to examine each picture sequentially, according to numbering, while trying to give free rein to their imagination and compose a short story for each of them, which will reflect the following aspects:

1) What is happening at the moment?
2) Who are these people?
3) What are they thinking and feeling?
4) What led to this situation and how will it end?

There is also a request not to use well-known plots that can be taken from books, theatrical performances or films, that is, to invent only your own. It is emphasized that the object of the experimenter’s attention is the subject’s imagination, the ability to invent, and the wealth of fantasy.

Usually, each child is given a double notebook sheet, on which, most often, eight short stories are freely placed, containing answers to all the questions posed. To prevent children from feeling limited, you can give two of these sheets. There is also no time limit, but the experimenter urges the children to get more immediate answers.

In addition to analyzing stories and their content, the psychologist is given the opportunity to analyze the child’s handwriting, writing style, manner of presentation, language culture, vocabulary, which is also of great importance for assessing the personality as a whole.

Protective tendencies can manifest themselves in the form of somewhat monotonous plots where there is no conflict: we can talk about dancing or gymnastic exercises, yoga classes.

WHAT THE STORIES TELL ABOUT

1st picture provokes the creation of stories that reveal the child’s attitude to the problem of power and humiliation. To understand which of the characters the child identifies with, you should pay attention to which of them in the story he pays more attention to and attributes stronger feelings to, gives reasons justifying his position, non-standard thoughts or statements.

The length of the story also largely depends on the emotional significance of a particular plot.

2, 5 and 7th pictures are more associated with conflict situations (for example, family), where difficult relationships between two people are experienced by someone else who cannot decisively change the situation. Often a teenager sees himself in the role of this third party: he does not find understanding and acceptance in his family, suffers from constant quarrels and aggressive relationships between mother and father, often associated with their alcoholism. At the same time, the position third party may be indifferent ( 2nd picture), passive or passive in the form of avoidance of interference ( 5th picture), peacekeeping or other attempt to intervene ( 7th picture).

3rd and 4th pictures more often provoke the identification of conflict in the sphere of personal, love or friendly relationships. The stories also show themes of loneliness, abandonment, frustrated need for warm relationships, love and affection, misunderstanding and rejection in the team.

2nd picture most often causes an emotional response in emotionally unstable adolescents, reminds of meaningless outbursts of uncontrollable emotions, while about 5th pictures More plots are constructed that involve a duel of opinions, an argument, the desire to blame another and justify oneself.

Argumentation of one’s rightness and the subjects’ experience of resentment in stories about 7th picture are often resolved by mutual aggression between the characters. What matters here is which position prevails in the hero with whom the child identifies himself: extrapunitive (the accusation is directed outward) or intropunitive (the accusation is directed towards oneself).

6th picture provokes aggressive reactions of the child in response to the injustice he subjectively experiences. With the help of this picture (if the subject identifies himself with a defeated person), the sacrificial position, humiliation is revealed.

8th picture reveals the problem of the object’s rejection of emotional attachment or flight from the annoying persecution of the person he rejects. A sign of identifying oneself with one or another character in a story is the tendency to attribute plot-developed experiences and thoughts to precisely that character who in the story turns out to belong to the same gender as the subject. It is interesting to note that with equal conviction the same pictorial image is recognized by one child as a man, by another as a woman, while each has complete confidence that this cannot raise any doubts.

“Look how she sits! Judging by the pose, this is a girl (or girl, woman),” says one. “This is definitely a boy (or a man), you can see right away!” says another. In this case, the subjects look at the same picture. This example once again clearly demonstrates the pronounced subjectivity of perception and the tendency to attribute very specific qualities to the very amorphous stimulus material of techniques. This happens in those individuals for whom the situation depicted in the picture is emotionally significant.

Of course, an oral story or additional discussion of written stories is more informative, but during a group examination it is more convenient to limit yourself to a written presentation.

The interpersonal conflict, which sounds in virtually every picture, not only makes it possible to determine the zone of disturbed relationships experienced by the child with others, but often highlights a complex intrapersonal conflict.

So, a 16-year-old girl, based on the 4th picture, constructs the following plot: “He declared his love to the girl. She answered him: “No.” He's leaving. She is proud and cannot admit that she loves him, because she believes that after such a confession she will become a slave to her feelings, and she cannot agree to this. He will suffer in silence. Someday they will meet: he is with someone else, she is married (although she does not love her husband). She has already gotten over her feeling, but he still remembers her. Well, so be it, but it’s calmer. She is invulnerable."

There is a lot of personal stuff in this story that doesn’t follow from the picture. The external conflict is clearly secondary and is based on a pronounced intrapersonal conflict: the need for love and deep affection is frustrated. The girl is afraid of possible failure. Painful pride, developed on the basis of negative life experiences, blocks free self-realization and spontaneity of feelings, forces her to give up love, so as not to increase the level of already high anxiety and self-doubt.

When studying the problems of a teenager in family situations, RAT clearly identifies his position. It is unlikely that a teenager himself could tell a better story about himself: self-understanding and life experience at this age are at a fairly low level.

Self-understanding and awareness of one’s own role in complex conflicts of everyday situations are also poorly expressed in children with a high level of neuroticism, emotionally unstable or impulsive.

In this regard, psychological research using RAT contributes to a more targeted choice of psychocorrectional approach, not only with a focus on the content side and sphere of the subject’s experiences, but also with an appeal to a certain linguistic and intellectual-cultural level of the personality of the child being consulted by a psychologist.

Lyudmila SOBCHIK,
Doctor of Psychology

1 G. Murray. Personality. N.Y., 1960.
2 Leontyev D.A. Thematic apperception test. M.: Smysl, 1998.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a set of 31 tables with black and white photographic images on thin white matte cardboard. One of the tables is a blank white sheet.

The subject is presented in a certain order with 20 tables from this set (their choice is determined by the gender and age of the subject). His task is to compose plot stories based on the situation depicted on each table.

Initially, the Thematic Apperception Test was conceived as a technique for studying imagination. As it was used, however, it became clear that the diagnostic information obtained with its help goes far beyond the scope of this area and makes it possible to give a detailed description of the deep tendencies of the individual, including its needs and motives, attitudes towards the world, character traits, typical forms behavior, internal and external conflicts, features of mental processes, psychological defense mechanisms, etc.

Based on the data from this test, one can draw conclusions about the level of intellectual development and the presence of signs of certain mental disorders, although it is impossible to make a clinical diagnosis based on the data of this test alone, as well as any other psychological test. You cannot work with the technique “blindly”, without preliminary biographical (anamnestic) information about the subject. The most fruitful application of the Thematic Apperception Test in the clinic of borderline states.

Using the Thematic Apperception Test with other techniques

At the same time, it is advisable to use it in one battery with a test or MMPI, which allows you to obtain information that complements the TAT data. Thus, information extracted from TAT, as a rule, allows for a deeper and more meaningful interpretation of the structure of the MMPI profile, the nature and origin of certain peaks

Although TAT provides the opportunity to obtain exceptionally deep and extensive information about an individual, it in no way guarantees that this information will be obtained in each particular case. The volume and depth of information received depends on the personality of the subject and, to the greatest extent, on the qualifications of the psychodiagnostician, and the lack of qualifications affects not only the stage of interpretation of the results, but also during the research

It is recommended to be used in cases that raise doubts, require subtle differential diagnosis, as well as in situations of maximum responsibility, such as when selecting candidates for leadership positions, astronauts, pilots, etc. It is recommended to be used in the initial stages of individual psychotherapy, since it allows one to immediately identify psychodynamics, which in ordinary psychotherapeutic work becomes visible only after a fair amount of time.

TAT is especially useful in a psychotherapeutic context in cases requiring acute and short-term treatment (for example, depression with suicidal risk).

TAT is useful for establishing contact between the therapist and the client and forming an adequate psychotherapeutic attitude in the latter. In particular, the use of test stories as material for discussion can successfully overcome the client’s possible difficulties in communicating and discussing their problems, free association, etc.

Contraindications to the use of TAT, as well as other psychological tests, include (1) acute psychosis or a state of acute anxiety; (2) difficulty in establishing contacts; (3) the likelihood that the client will consider the use of tests as a surrogate, a lack of interest on the part of the therapist; (4) the likelihood that the client will perceive this as a manifestation of the therapist's incompetence; (5) specific fear and avoidance of testing situations of any kind; (6) the possibility that the test material stimulates the expression of excessive problematic material at too early a stage; (7) specific contraindications related to the specific dynamics of the psychotherapeutic process at the moment and requiring testing to be postponed until later. In addition to psychodiagnostic tasks, TAT is also used for research purposes as a tool for recording certain personal variables (most often motives).

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THE THEMATIC APPERCEPTIVE TEST

The main advantage of TAT is the richness, depth and variety of information obtained with its help. In addition, interpretation schemes usually used in practice, including the scheme given in this description, can be supplemented with new indicators depending on the tasks that the psychodiagnostician sets himself. The ability to combine various interpretive schemes or improve and supplement them based on one’s own experience with the technique, the ability to process the same protocols repeatedly using different schemes, the independence of the results processing procedure from the examination procedure is another significant advantage of the technique.

The main disadvantage of this test is, first of all, the complexity of both the examination procedure and the processing and analysis of the results. The total examination time for a mentally healthy subject is rarely less than two hours. It takes almost the same amount of time to fully process the results obtained. At the same time, as already noted, high requirements are placed on qualifications, which decisively determine whether it will be possible to obtain information suitable for psychodiagnostic interpretation.

PLACE OF TAT IN THE SYSTEM OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSTICS METHODS

The thematic apperception test belongs to the class of projective psychodiagnostic methods. In contrast to widely used questionnaires, which make it possible to quantitatively assess the result of any individual against the background of the population as a whole using a set of ready-made scales, projective methods make it possible to obtain a kind of “imprint” of the internal state of the subject, which is then subjected to qualitative analysis and interpretation.

The stimulus material of the test is distinguished by two features: firstly, the relative completeness of coverage of all spheres of relations with the world, personal experience, and, secondly, the uncertainty, potential ambiguity of understanding and interpretation of the depicted situations. According to another classification, TAT belongs to the class of operant methods - methods based on the analysis of free (within the instructions) verbal, graphic or any other production of the subject. The opposite of operant methods are respondent methods, in which the subject only selects one of several proposed alternatives. Respondent methods include questionnaires, ranking methods (for example, the method of studying value orientations), scaling methods (for example, semantic differential) and others.

Some projective methods (Szondi and Luscher test) also belong to the respondent class. A more detailed generally accepted classification of projective techniques classifies the test as a group of interpretation techniques, in which the subject is faced with the task of giving his own interpretation of the proposed situations. Finally, we can distinguish an even narrower group of thematic apperception techniques, including, in addition to the TAT itself, its analogues and modifications for different age, ethnocultural and social groups, as well as modifications for targeted and more accurate diagnosis of individual motivational tendencies.

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