Today is about one more fun entertainment. Making a psychological diagnosis and drawing conclusions. Here it is “the cat’s tail is too long — it’s also a phallic symbol, which means … trouble, comrades!”. Well, about the black color, which, it seems, promises quite sadness and big problems.
Drawing techniques refer to projective methods in psychology. This is when a person projects a task offered to him onto a piece of paper. For example, draw a person, a family or a non-existent animal. So the psychologist wants to see how a person identifies himself or how he sees his position in his immediate environment, how his fantasy is developed. Such techniques have a fairly free interpretation. This means that there are certain parameters that indicate the likelihood of a particular value.
From the simplest things that experts look at — the location of the figures on the sheet, their size, detailing, accents on certain parts of the body, the choice of colors, shading and shading, expanding the plot (finishing, for example, when drawing a man of the sun, grass, houses, etc.). P.). The smaller the figure, the less significant the person feels. When drawing in detail or shading individual parts of the body, it is believed that there are difficulties there. Large, rimmed eyes may indicate fear (“eyes wide open in fear”) or vision problems. Emphasis on the mouth, teeth may indicate aggression. Hatching of the middle of the body about problems in the genital area. The absence of any of the family members in the figure is about his denial by the author.
Thus, a drawing of a child depicting himself with big eyes and a huge mother with massive arms and a bold mouth can be interpreted by a psychologist as a conflict relationship, a dominant, domineering, yelling mother and a poor, unhappy baby whom the mother intimidated. Or even more fun. When a drawing of a girl, where she depicts herself with her eyes closed and her dad pressed close to her, on which shorts are heavily shaded, is interpreted as sexual abuse. And if all this is still in black tones, then turn off the light altogether.
But what if that massive mother is actually an opera singer, and the child has minus two vision? What if that girl rarely sees a worker 24⁄7 dad who bought himself new striped shorts yesterday? And they are all doing well in general and leave me alone. All these conclusions are free interpretation. That is, the value judgments of some psychologist who deduced it like this. But one deduced so, and the other otherwise. So where is the truth?
The truth is that drawing conclusions only from a drawing, and indeed only on the basis of projective methods, is a sign of incompetence. By the way, projective techniques are not only picturesque. The well-known Rorschach inkblots, for example, is also a projective technique in which a person freely explains the stimulus pictures presented to him. And situations are not uncommon when, according to a person’s answers to these pictures, they confidently write outright heresy in custody.
The projection is of an unconscious nature and performs a protective function, as if softening the contradictions between the true unconscious needs of a person and his social norms and beliefs. There is a problem of standardization of projective methods — some of them do not contain clear parameters of the norm and do not have a mathematical apparatus for objective processing of the results. They may show a deviation from the norm, but they will not be able to give a specific understanding of the magnitude of this deviation.
Gu.e. Speaking of which, if a seven-year-old boy draws a detailed vagina, it will raise questions in our society. But it is impossible to say only from this picture whether he is subjected to violence, corruption or his gender-role identification is violated. Therefore, in a professional expert study, projective techniques can be used as a supplement. That is, in order to once again confirm the results already obtained through other methods — more valid and reliable, representative and standardized.
Yes, experimental psychology is not a flight of fancy, but the implementation of a general methodological approach that includes a qualitative description of the results obtained, their structural and mathematical analysis. And now, when all the reactions have already been monitored and recorded, the scales are going off scale, the scores and graphs have been verified, objective data have been obtained, then it’s not bad to confirm all this with a picture. Well, to be sure.
Therefore, if in a child’s drawing “the cat’s tail is too long”, this in itself does not mean anything, but only in conjunction with the indicators identified by other methods. That is, an anamnesis was collected, the case materials were analyzed (if we are talking about an examination). Individual psychological characteristics, the level of intelligence have been established, the mechanisms of motives have been studied, signs of psychological trauma associated with exposure to sexual integrity, early sexualization, adult speech attitudes and beliefs, inducing influence, anxiety, distancing, and so on have been identified. Then, so be it, you can look at the «cat’s tail» from a different angle. The most common mistake psychologists make is to silently take a drawing and not conduct a survey on it with the author.
By the way, in the expert study, when applying drawing techniques, only a simple pencil is used. No colors for you. And if your child constantly draws black cacti, then you, of course, can show it to a competent specialist. Especially if other than that you care about something else. But you need to understand that the taste and color of all felt-tip pens are different. Preschoolers generally love contrasting colors and often choose black — these are age-related features of perception. The more contrast to the paper color, the better children perceive their own creativity. And many teenagers just like black design. And cacti. Just. Like it.