The Thematic

Apperception
Test
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective
technique…
◦ ….involving projection based on ambiguous stimuli
◦ …premised on projective hypothesis

Advantages of projective techniques

◦ Assessing subconscious personality traits, needs and
desires
◦ Projective techniques provide insights into personality
that is difficult to obtaine otherwise
It was conceptualized by Henry Murray and
Christina Morgan on 1935 but more fully
elaborated in 1938 and 1943.

It has currently got 31 cards

It was believed that material derived from the test

could serve as the X-ray of personality.
The TAT gives primarily, and more so than any other test in use at present, the
actual dynamics of interpersonal relationships.
By the very nature of the pictures it gives basic data on the testee's relationship
to male or female authority figures, to contemporaries of both sexes, and
frequently it shows the genesis in terms of family relations.
It tells one the nature of them—fear of lack of support or fear of attack by
characters in specific situations—and it shows the hierarchy of needs and the
structure of the com-promises between id, ego, and superego.
Disadva
The test is still not considered to have achieved degree of comparable
degree of standardization to MMPI.
No clear agreed on scoring and interpretation system
Varying methods of administration regarding number, sequence and
types of cards that are given
 Murray’s Theory of
Personality
1. How individuals react with their environment
2. How they are affected by their external forces
3. How their attitudes, needs and values influence their reaction to
world
4. Murray developed a list of 28 “needs”
He developed a list of 24 possible forces in person’s environment
named as ‘’press”
He gave the concept of “thema- a pattern of related needs and press”
derived from early infantile experiences
General Conditions:
It is to be administered in an interpersonal setting.
TAT materials consists of cards on which ambiguous pictures are
presented. –
”M” for males, “F” for females -”B” for boys, “G” for girls -”BM” for
boys/males, “GF” for girls/females.
The selection of cards may be idiosyncratic to the patient’s presenting
problem.
a) administered to females and males in exact order : 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6BM,
7GF, 8BM, 9GF, 10, 13MF.
b) administered to any males: 1, 2, 3BM, 4, 6BM, 7BM, 11, 12M, 13MF.
c) administered to any females: 1, 2, 3, 3BM, 4, 6GF, 7GF, 9GF, 11,
13GF.
Instructions:
The examiner will show some pictures one at a time, and the subject
will be making up as dramatic a story as he/she can for each picture
card.
50 minutes for 10 pictures.
The following story structure must be obtained:
a) Current situation - what is happening at the moment?
b) Thoughts and feelings of the character(s)- what the characters are
feeling and thinking?
c) Preceding events- what has led up to the event shown in the picture?
d) Outcome -what was the outcome?
Procedure:
TIME – time should begin when the picture is first presented and end
when the subject begins his or her story.
RECORDING a subject’s complete responses should be recorded, along
with any noteworthy behavioral observations: exclamation, pauses,
blushing, degree of involvement , and change in voice inflection.
INQUIRY
To produce an unhampered and free-flow of the subject’s fantasy
material- Questioning/Inquiry is done after the cards are administered.
Figures, Objects, or
Circumstances Introduced.
A person who introduces weapons of one sort or another in a number
of stories (even without using them in the context) or who has food as
an integral part (even without eating it) may be tentatively judged on
such evidence as having a need for aggression or oral gratification,
respectively. Similarly, the introduction of such figures as punisher,
pursuer, benefactor, and the like, or such circumstances as injustice,
deprivation, and so on, may be interpreted with due regard to the rest
of the record.
Figures, Objects, or
Circumstances Omitted.
If a subject omits reference to the gun in 3BM and to the rifle in 8BM,
or does not see the one woman in 18GF choking the other, one may
infer a need to repress aggression--or a need to repress sexual stimuli if
the semi-nude in the background of picture 4 is ignored, or if 13MF is
seen as entirely devoid of sexual references. The inference can only be
tentative until we have a large enough sample to achieve a statistical
basis for what the expectations are when a certain object is introduced
or omitted, so as to be reasonably accurate in judging when a person
deviates from the norm.
The Conception of the
Environment (World)
This concept is a complex mixture of unconscious self-perception and
apperceptive distortion of stimuli by memory images of the past. The
more consistent a picture of the environment appears in the T.A.T.
stories, the more reason we have to consider it an important
constituent of the person's personality and a useful clue to his or her
reactions in everyday life. Usually, descriptive terms will suffice, such as
succorant, hostile, exploiting, friendly, dangerous, and so forth.
Figures Seen as...
The T.A.T. is primarily an instrument that permits a study of the
apperceptive distortions of the social relationships and the dynamic
factors basic to them. Therefore, an exhaustive study of the hero's
attitudes to parental, contemporary, and younger or inferior persons is
an integral part of our scheme.
This method permits recording these apperceptions and the person's
reactions to his or her perception--that is, each picture allows the
person to create a situation that can best be understood as a problem
("Tell me what is going on") which he or she then has to proceed to
solve ("And tell me what the outcome will be"), thus baring his or her
ability to come to compromise formations with personal needs; in other
words, to show one's defenses.
For instance, if a person chooses to perceive female figures in the T.A.T.
as aggressive, then it is worthwhile for us to determine how he or she
proceeds to react to these creatures of one's fancy, whether with
withdrawal, counter aggression, intellectualization, or other forms of
behavior
Significant Conflicts
When we study the significant conflicts of an individual, we not only
want to know the nature of the conflict but also the defenses which the
person uses against it. It is important, in designating which drive or
force is in conflict with the super- ego, to specify in a word or two the
resultant behavior: e.g., if the conflict is between superego and
aggression, it may be that the person reacts with shyness. Here, one has
an excellent opportunity for a study of the character structure and the
prognosis of the person. Sometimes, the conflict may not be between
the superego and such drives as aggression, acquisition, or sexual
desires, but between two drives such as achievement and pleasure or
autonomy and compliance.
Nature of Anxieties
The importance of determining the main anxieties hardly needs
emphasizing. Again, it will be valuable to note the defenses in this
context, whether they take the form of passivity, flight, aggression,
orality, or those mentioned next.
Main Defenses against
Conflicts and Fears
The T.A.T. should not be studied exclusively for need content, but
should, in addition, be examined for the defenses against these needs.
Such a study of defenses will often offer more information in that the
needs may appear less clearly than the defenses against them; on the
other hand, the defensive structure may be more closely related to
manifest behavior. By studying drives and defenses, the T.A.T. often
permits a clear-cut appraisal of the character structure of the person.
It is also valuable to study the molar aspects of the stories. For instance,
some people choose obsessive defenses against a disturbing picture
content; they may produce four or five themes, each very short and
descriptive, manifestly different but dynamically identical. Sometimes a
succession of themes to one and the same picture shows the person's
attempts to deal with a disturbing conflict; successive stories may
become more and more safe, showing an increase in the defenses. On
the other hand, each successive theme may permit more expression of
the forbidden desire or need.
Adequacy of Superego
The relationship of the nature of the punishment to the severity of the
offense gives one an excellent insight into the severity of the superego;
a psychopath's hero may consistently receive no punishment in stories
of murder, with no more than a slight suggestion that he may have
learned a lesson for later life; whereas a neurotic may have stories in
which the hero is accidentally or intentionally killed or mangled or dies
of illness following the slightest infraction or expression of aggression.
On the other hand, a nonintegrated superego, sometimes too severe
and sometimes too lenient, is also frequently met in neurotics
Integration of the Ego
This is, of course, an important variable to learn about; it reveals how
well a person is to function. It tells to what extent he or she is able to
compromise between needs and the demands of reality on the one
hand, and the commands of superego on the other.
The adequacy of the hero in dealing with the problems he or she is
confronted with in the pictures, and his or her own apperception of it,
reveals what the therapist wants to know in this respect.
Here, one is interested in some formal characteristics: Is the person
able to tell appropriate stories that constitute a certain amount of
cognizance of the adaptive aspects of the stimulus, or does he or she
leave the stimulus completely and tell a story with no manifest relation
to the picture because he or she is not well enough to perceive reality
or too preoccupied with personal problems to keep them out, whether
pertinent or not?
Does she or he find rescue and salvation from the anxiety pertaining to
the test by giving very stereotyped responses, or is the individual well
enough and intelligent enough to be creative and give more or less
original stories?
Having produced a plot, can the person attain a solution of the conflicts
in the story and within himself or herself which is adequate, complete
and realistic, or do his or her thought processes become unstructured
or even bizarre under the impact of the problem?
These observations permit an appraisal of what really constitutes ego
strength, often contributing a great deal to facilitating possible
classification of the patient in one of the nosological categories, in
addition to the dynamic diagnosis which the content variables supply as
the main contribution of the T.A.T
Here, too, belong such considerations as the distance of the subject
from his or her story; for instance, if the setting of the story is far away
or long ago, or if the hero is merely an onlooker, or if it is reported as a
scene from a movie, or if emotional situations are told in a sarcastic
tone and embellished with sotto voce remarks, all these factors usually
imply an attempt to isolate oneself from the emotional content of the
story as a defense mechanism. On the other hand, if a person
immediately involves himself or herself personally in the story and says,
'What is just what happened to me .... " it may mean a loss of distance
and implies a very narcissistic preoccupation with the self.
From a formal standpoint, it is useful to consider that telling stories
about the pictures is a task which the person must perform. We may
judge the person's adequacy, ego strength, and other variables from
the standpoint of his or her ability and way of meeting the task.