AN INDIAN MODIFICATION OF THE THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST (TAT) yy UMA CHOWDHURY, M.A., Ph.D Wa 2 Foreword By Dr. LEOPOLD BELLAK, M.D.FOREWORD The Thematic Apperception Testi uniquely sensitive tool for the dynamic itarpretaton af the many different facets of personaly Dr. Uma Chowdhury acquired extensive training and a great dest of personal experience with the TAT and other instruments in Europe, the United States and her native India. She happens to combine, fortuitously. «thorough knowledge of cultura anthropology and clinical Psychology with this training and experience and an apparently limilless energy and patience and very great ability Her Indian adaptation was painstakingly avived at, afer thorough testing out of dierent, pictures in clinic, laboratory and in fld studies. Twas privileged to see some of er material ‘obtained in work for the Iadian government in Bengal, many years ago, and later was hap’ to ‘work with hr in the United States, on the TAT as wel asthe CAT and other mates In the course of my acquaintance with Dr. Chowdhury and her work, I learned a good eal myself: about India, about its people and about the ability of Dr. Chowdhury’: pictares to teveal a great deal of fascinating information on diferent cultural and ethic groups of Indi Aside From being most interesting, it became obvious that material thus obtained was able to provide practical guidelines for problems such as family planning among the Abor people and problems of acculturation generally, and diference in nuances between the urban and rural populations. to mention but afew. T should lke to emphasize two important points in connection with ths Indian adaptation: the task Dr. Chowdhury performed was not as easyasitmay Seem, Test adaptation does not mean merely substitution of ethni types, dresses and baie syle, and other superficial features. It takes 2 thorough understanding ofthe culture and adaptation of test material to is specific values. ‘The other point to keep in mind is that test administration and evaluation may seem too easy, Let me stress that it takes thorough taining in clinical psychology generally, esting parti= cular, and experience with this particular tes especially in order not to jump to undue con- clusions and easy over-generalizations. 1am confident that Dr. Chowdhury’s work wil continue to grow in useflnes for India specifically and the worldwide community of behavioral scientists generally. Leopold BellakFreud to whom we owe the discovery of the “Unconscious” and the free- association method by which later on he attempted to study the inner life of the individual, Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis became the basis of all projective methods, and his realization of the importance of studying the rela- tionship between the therapist and the subject led ultimately to the development of the Projective Techniques which is a device for studying the inner life of an individual through their behaviour manifestation. The way in which Jung in 1904 utilized the free-association method, foreshadowed the finalization of the Projective Techniques as developed by Rorschach into a strictly scientific method. ‘Another line of development was the Thematic Apperception Test of Murray which was anticipated in the picture reaction cards of Stanly Hall and Brittain. The Thematic Apperception Test appeared in 1935 as the outcome of the clinical researches of Murray and Morgan. Murray's book on personality came out in 1939, in which he developed this form of Projective Technique for the study of personality (11). The term projection was used by Freud in 1894, who, in his paper on ‘Anxiety Neurosis’, stated that the psyche developed the neurosis of anxiety when it found itself unable to master excitation (sexual) arising endo- genously. It had then to act as if it had projected this excitation into the outer world (2). The best example of it is again given by Freud in his paper on De- ‘mentia Paranoia. In 1911 while analysing the mechanism of paranoia, Freud argued that “The mechanism of symptom formation in paranoia requires that internal perceptions or feelings, shall be replaced by external perceptions”. Consequently the proposition “I hate him’ becomes transformed by Projection into another one. He hates (persecutes) me, which will justify me, in hating hhim; and thus the unconscious feeling, which is in fact the motive force, makes its appearance as though it were the consequence of an external perception, ‘Ido not love him, I hate him, because he persecutes me’ (4). In both the papers, projection was used mainly in the sense of defense ‘mechanism. Besides this concept, in many of his writings, the broader aspect of projection was emphasized. His elaboration of the meaning of the term ‘cannot be better expressed than in his own words as he said in Totem and Taboo that Projection is not specially created for the purpose of defense, it also comes into being where there are no conflicts. The projection of inner perceptions to the outside is a primitive mechanism, which, for instance also influences our sense-perceptions, so that it normally has the greatest share, in shaping our outer world. Under conditions that have not yet been sufficiently -determined, even inner perceptions of ideational and emotional processes are Projected outwardly, like sense perceptions, and are used to shape the outer world, whereas they ought to remain in the inner world (5). Dr. Leopold Bellak has advanced the concept of ‘Apperceptive Distortion’. This idea of Appercep- tive Distortion is based on the Freudian conception ‘that memories of percepts influence perception of contemporary stimuli’ (1), Bellak is of opinion that the present interpretation and perception of parental figures in TAT is influenced by the subject’s past memory of his own parental figures. He has further stated that it was revealed to him during his experiments that the behaviour of the experimenter can bring out sentiments that originally were probably related to the father figure. While these sentiments had a demonstrable but overall in- fluence on the perception of stimuli, individual differences were maintained according to the genetically determined personality. It seems, then, that percept ‘memories influence the perception of contemporary stimuli and not only for the narrowly defined purpose of defense, as stated in the original definition of projection, We are compelled to assume that all present perception is influenced by past perception, and that, indeed, the nature of the perceptions and their inter-action with each other constitute the field of psychology of personality. Ego psychology has not only played a predominant role in psycho-analysis but also in the field of projective techniques by helping in producing imaginative responses. Productions of imaginative responses in Projective Test situations depend solely on the concept of nature and functions of the ego, particularly from the standpoint of ego strength. Another important aspect is autistic perception which is stressed by many writers. The ‘autistic’ projections are those which are strongly influenced ty the needs of an individual and to be consistent with the needs the figural aspects of the perceived objects are modified. Murphy wrote ‘so wherever our needs differ we literally see differently’ (3). ‘We need not go further into the intricacies of all these points discussed above. It appears to me that it will be best to accept the projection both in the sense of defense mechanism as also in the wider connotations. ‘Though the term ‘Projection’ has been in use for a long time, the expres- sion ‘Projective Technique’ first made its appearance in a paper by L. K. Frank (©). It really means the inclusion of a series of psychological mechanisms through which free response to, more or less, unstructured or semi-structured stimuli are noted.Area of Application of the Test Broadly speaking, the projective tests have been applied mainly on three areas: viz. (I) the psychopathological (2) the genetic and (3) the cultural (0) In the area of psychopathology, the technique was first developed and is most widely used both for the purpose of psychodiagnosis and therapy. (2) In the genetic, or developmental arca the technique has been used to study the development of personality structure of the individual. (3) In the cultural area, the technique has been applied in studying the development and growth of personality structure of different ethnic groups. ‘The TAT is proved to be useful in any study of personality, interpreta- tion of behaviour disorders and neuroses and psychoses and can be used as short therapy method of personality and diagnosis of community problems in varied cultural areas. 'As defined by Murray (12), the TAT is a method of revealing to the trained interpreter some of the dominant drives, emotions, sentiments, complexes ‘and conflicts of personality. He explains that the object of the test is to make the subject project through the medium of these cards his own underlying needs fand phantasies. A critical situation is to be portrayed in each picture which Guust be such as to bring out phantasy associated with it, Further, the cards Should be comprehensive, and each should depict a person with whom the subject can clearly identify himself (12). “The test is unstructured and revealed by indirect methods of enquiry to @ trained interpreter who has enough sensitivity and empathy. This is a. very venaitive instrument and can best be applied and interpreted by a trained inter- vrerer with 2 thorough knowledge of the cultural background and the