UNIT III: FOUNDATION THEORETICALABOUT HTP

(HOUSE-TREE-PERSON)
Prof. MSc. Niamey Granhen Brandão da Costa
Psychologist – CRP 10/00236

Opening Words

• The psychological test is an auxiliary instrument in psychological assessment, constructed with

scientific bases and research. (LEVENFUS, 2009)

Graphic Tests

• Drawing predates written language and is considered one of the oldest forms
of human communication. This is evidenced by the drawings and paintings of men
the caves and the primitive peoples, who made their way to us with their
interests and expressions of aspects of your life." (RETONDO, 2000, p 54)

• Graphic: graphic representation, outline or drawing, graphic projection.

Projective Techniques

• We stimulate the projection of elements of personality and areas of conflict within the
therapeutic situation, allowing them to be identified with the purpose of
evaluation and used for the establishment of effective therapeutic communication. (BUCK,
2003, p. 1)

House-Tree-Person (H-T-P) Test

• John N. Buck

• Objective: This test is used as a projective drawing technique with the aim of
get information on how a person experiences their individuality in relation to
to others and to the home environment.

• Presented in 1946 and published in 1948.

 • It is a projective drawing technique aimed at studying personality traits;

• Being a projective technique, it is an instrument that is considered sensitive to aspects

unconscious or veiled behaviors, which allows or encourages a broad
variety of responses in the subject;

• [...] projection is the psychological process of attributing qualities, feelings, attitudes

and their own desires, to the objects of the environment. The content of the projection may or may not be

known by the subject as part of himself.” (HAMMER, 1981, p. 76)

Advantages

Simple application;

2. Economic (material, time, and interpretation);

3. It can be applied to children, illiterates, and foreigners;

4. It can have collective application;

It is interpreted directly from the drawings, without numbers or records;

6. Offers release opportunities with therapeutic effects.

Disadvantages

Vulnerable to abuse due to its easy application;

2. One cannot deny the cultural traits.

Main Postulates

A certain detail or combination of them may have a special, positive meaning.

or negative:

Positive Characteristics:

• Confabulation;

• Bizarre details;
 • Turn off frequently;

• Presentation of the detail in a different way than usual.

Negative characteristics:

• Incomplete drawings;

• Evasive comments.

Each drawing must be considered a self-portrait;

3. The interpretation of the details or a set of them will provide information about the needs,
fears and conflicts of the subject;

4. That the subject participates in the interpretation of the drawing by providing verbal data for it;

One only interprets a specific detail, taking into account the global figure;

6. Circumspection, knowledge of the subject, personality, environment, situation and

clinical experience must exist in the analysis of the test.

The H.T.P consists of a minimum of two phases:

1. Non-Verbal: productive, creative and almost completely unstructured (drawing): consists

inviting the individual to make a freehand achromatic drawing of a house, of a tree
and of a person;

Verbal: of aperception, explanatory and more structured than the first (inquiry): involves
to ask a series of questions related to the individual's associations about aspects of each
drawing.

Stages 3 and 4:

3. The individual draws a house, a tree, and a person (or two people) again.
"sometimes using crayons;"

4. The examiner asks additional questions about the colored drawings.

Chromatic Phase

It constitutes a resource to explore deeper layers of personality, allowing

"obtain a framework of the hierarchy of defenses and conflicts of the patient" (HAMMER, 1991 apud

CUNHA, 2000, p. 519

Administration

• Target population: indicated for individuals over 8 years of age

(children, adolescents and adults).

• Use: generally applied in a face-to-face situation, as part of an assessment

initial or of an ongoing therapeutic intervention for a specific individual.

• Material: sheet of white sulfite paper, A-4 size, for each drawing (protocol
for drawing), several black pencils number 2, eraser, a set of crayons (at least
8 colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, brown, and black) and protocol of
interpretation for each set – achromatic and chromatic (includes a part of
survey following the design for each design.

• Time: 30 to 90 minutes (depending on the number of requested drawings).

Organization

• The test consists of the presentation of three concepts, each on its own sheet (one
house, a tree and a person) that are familiar even to small children.

Importance of observations during testing (MORRIS, 1976 cited in CUNHA, 2000, p.

519)

• Subjects' reactions to instructions should be recorded, which may involve clues.

of anxiety, resistance, distrust or, on the contrary, of cooperation or
passive acceptance of the task.

• It should be noted: 'The reaction time and verbal and non-verbal behaviors.'
In the testing situation, the following should be observed:

• Verbalizations of the subject;

• Movement that the subject makes while drawing;

• The moment of the subject (situational aspect);
• The eraser;
• Cooperation;
• Refusal to draw;
• Empathy;
• Symptoms of tension;
• Latency time (or reaction time) and total time of drawings;
• Difficulty in drawing something;
• Physical disability;
• Mannerisms or tics.

Interpretation

The drawings are evaluated:

• Based on the content, the signs of existing or potential psychopathology;

• Characteristics of the drawing (size, location, presence or absence of

certain parts);

• Responses of the individual during the inquiry.

One must evaluate the drawing as a whole and observe if the connotation given by the individual to
drawing is emotional or social;

Consider:

• Size of the drawing;

• Disposition of and on the paper (location);

• Line pressure;

• Degree of supplements and details;

 • Latency time and total time;

• Characterization of the trait;

• Erasures (use of an eraser);

• Symmetry, perspective, and proportions;

• Resistances;

• Conflict indicators (reinforcements, shading, corrections, touch-ups, and transparency);

• Content.

Achromatic Drawings

• Present (in a horizontal sense) the protocol page related to the house for the client.
with the word CASAn at the top of the page.

• The pages related to the tree and the person must also be presented vertically.
with the word corresponding to each drawing at the top of the page.

• An additional drawing of a person of the opposite sex may be requested at this time.

Instructions drawing HOUSE

• I want you to draw a house. You can draw any kind of house you want.
Do the best you can. You can erase as much as you want and you can take as long as you need.
just do your best.

• The drawing must be freehand.

• If the individual shows concern about their ability to draw,

emphasize that this is not a test of artistic skills, and that the drawing should be,
just, the result of your greatest effort.

To annotate

• The initial latency;

 • Order of the drawn details (observe and record unusual events in sequence
of the drawings);

• Duration of breaks and the specific detail of when the break occurs;

• Any spontaneous verbalization or demonstration of emotion and the detail that is present
being designed when these occur;

• Total time taken to complete the drawing.

Inquiry after the Design

• After the completion of the achromatic drawing done with the black pencil, the inquiry is conducted.

with the aim of giving the individual an opportunity to define, describe, and interpret
each drawing is to express thoughts, ideas, feelings, or memories
associated.

• Main objective: to understand the client by extracting as much information as possible from

information about the content and context of each drawing (time and rapport).

• Any implicit detail, like basic components hidden behind the figure or
that extend beyond the edge of the page should be investigated.

• Details that are added during the inquiry should also be identified.

• In the end, the inquiry asks the subject to draw a sun and a baseline.
drawings that do not have these details.

House

• "Would you like this house to be yours?"

• Ask the individual to describe the differences between the designed house and the house that he
he should really ask what the chances are of him having a similar house one day.
to be drawn.

• "Which room would you choose for yourself?" Determine how this compares with the
location of the room occupied by him in his current house.
Tree

• Where is this tree really located?

• If the answer is 'in the jungle' or 'in the forest', ask about the meaning of the jungle or
from the forest to the individual.

• How is the weather in this drawing?

Evaluation of the design: general aspects

ATTITUDE: provides data on the subject's overall disposition to reject a new task
and perhaps difficult. It will be influenced by the associations awakened by the object of the drawing. More
rejected is the person.

• The common attitude is one of reasonable acceptance.

• The deviations range between two extremes:

a) From total acceptance to hyper-egoism;

b) From indifference, defeatism and abandonment to open rejection.

2. TIME spent to complete the drawings, Latency and Pauses: can provide
valuable information about the meanings of the drawn objects and their parts
respective to the individual.

• The average latency is 30" (+ than 30" potential for psychopathology may be present).

3. CRITICAL CAPACITY (is one of the first intellectual functions to be affected in

presence of strong emotionality and/or organic processes) and SCRATCHES:

• Indicative behaviors of self-criticism include:

a) Abandonment of an unfinished object, restarting the drawing in another place of

drawing page, without erasing the abandoned drawing;

b) Delete without trying to redraw;

c) Turning off and redrawing, if better is a favorable sign, but can indicate pathology
if the attempt at correction represents excessive meticulousness, or a futile attempt
to achieve perfection or if the erasure is followed by a deterioration of the quality of the form.
 Persistently erasing and redrawing any part of the drawing strongly suggests
conflict regarding the detail or what it represents for the individual.

4. COMMENTS:

• During the design phase, they can represent a compulsive need to

structure the situation as completely as possible (indicative of insecurity), or a
compulsive need to compensate for an idea or feeling triggered by
something in the drawing.

• An excessive number of comments, irrelevant or bizarre comments indicate

concern.

General characteristics of drawing

• Proportion, perspective, and details: can provide information about the

functioning of an individual in the context of their expected level of functioning.

• 1st characteristic that stabilizes in development: appropriate and suitable use of

details

• 2nd characteristic: ability to represent realistic proportions;

• 3rd characteristic: ability to recognize and represent the need for perspective.

General characteristics of the drawing: Proportion

• They reveal the values attributed by the individual to objects, situations, and people.

• It also reveals the individual's ability to assign objective values to the elements.
from reality and make judgments with ease and flexibility

• Aspects:

• Between the drawn figure and the sheet of the drawing;

• Details in the drawn figure. (p.35)

General characteristics of the drawing: Perspective

• Indicate the individual's capacity to understand and successfully respond to aspects.

more complex, more abstract, and more demanding of life.

• Aspects: (p.36-38)

• Horizontal, vertical, and central alignment on the page;

• Change of the page position;

• Quadrants of the page;

• Page margins;

• Relation with the observer;

• Apparent distance in relation to the observer;

• Position;

• Transparencies (imply a failure in the critical function, it is assumed that they

indicate in the drawings of people without intellectual disabilities the extent to which the

the organization of personality is broken by functional, organic, or

both. The pathological significance can be assessed by its number and severity;

• Movement;

• Consistency.

General characteristics of the drawing: Details

• Can be considered as an index of recognition, interest, and reaction.

to the elements of daily life.

• Aspects: (p.38-40)

• Essentials;

• Non-essential;

• Irrelevant;

• Bizarros
 • Dimension of detail;

• Shadowing of the detail;

• Sequence of the detail;

• Emphasis on detail;

• Line quality.

General characteristics of the drawing: Color

• Provides an estimate of the individual's response stability in the test tasks,

through time and conditions.

• Aspects: (p.40-41)

• Choice;

• Application;

• Adequacy.

Characteristics of the drawing specific to the figure: House

• It seems to stimulate a mixture of conscious and unconscious associations related to

and intimate interpersonal relationships.

• For the child: the house seems to emphasize the adjustment to siblings and parents.
especially with the mother.

• For adults: it represents the adjustment to domestic situations in general and, more
specifically, to the spouse and children (if any).

• This drawing indicates the individual's ability to act under stress and
tensions in intimate human relationships and to critically analyze problems
created by the home situation.

• The interpretation areas in this drawing generally refer to accessibility, level

of contact with reality and degree of rigidity of the individual.
 • Proportion (p.42-43)
and the inquiry following the design (p.47-49).

Characteristics of the drawing specific to the figure: Tree

• It seems to stimulate fewer conscious associations and more subconscious associations and
unconscious of what the other two drawings are. It is a graphical expression of the experience
of balance felt by the individual and the view of their personality resources to
obtain satisfaction in and of your environment.

• The quality of the drawing seems to reflect an individual's ability to assess.

critically your relationships with the environment.

• Additional areas of interpretation include the individual's subconscious framework in

relationship to your development, contact with reality, feeling of balance
interpersonal and (when the tree represents another person) interpersonal pressures.

• Proportion (p.50), perspective (p.50-51), details (p.51-53), color suitability (p.54) and
post-design inquiry (pp. 54-57)

Characteristics of the drawing specific to the figure: Person

• The drawn person stimulates more conscious associations than the house or the tree.
including the direct expression of body image.

• The quality of the drawing reflects the individual's ability to act in

relationships and to subject the 'self' and interpersonal relationships to critical evaluation
objective.

• This drawing awakens feelings so intense that paranoid or psychopathic individuals

they can refuse to do them.

• Additional areas of interpretation may refer to the concept of the individual and their role.
and sexual attitudes towards a specific interpersonal relationship or to
interpersonal relationships in general.

• Proportion (p.58), perspective (p.58-59), details (p.59-62), color adequacy (p.62) and
post-design inquiry (p.62-65).
Still about the drawing of the Person

• Manifests 3 types of projections:

• Self-portrait: it is when the subject draws what he believes to be (physical self and self

psychological);

• Ideal self or ego ideal: to project your physical needs onto the design and
psychological;

• Significant people: to draw significant people from the family or the environment
contemporary or past social, due to the strong positive or negative valence.

References

BUCK, John N.H-T-P: tree-house-person, projective drawing technique: manual and guide of
interpretation. Review by Iraí Cristina Boccato Alves. 1st ed. São Paulo: Vetor, 2003.

CUNHA, Jurema Alcides. Psychodiagnosis V. 5th ed. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2000.