The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) appeared in 1938 and is still one of the most popular in projective psychology. Thanks to him, our hidden desires and needs, internal attitudes and beliefs are revealed to the psychologist by the work of our imagination.
American psychologist Henry Murray was inspired to create the TAT by a student Cecilia Roberts’ story about her son’s behavior. During his illness, the boy spent time inventing stories about people depicted in photographs and drawings in magazines. In this regard, Roberts wondered: can pictures be used for full-fledged clinical research on personality traits? Murray decided that stories about the abstract would make it easier for people (albeit unconsciously) to share personal experiences, and set to work on the test.
He attracted his beloved, follower and muse of Carl Jung, Christian Morgan, to the development. In addition to being trained as a nurse at the end of World War I, Morgan was also an artist and writer. Her task was to search for suitable images in magazines, which needed to be redrawn, adapting to the format of the future test. The original drawings became black and white and got rid of irrelevant details.
Soon, the name of one of its creators also disappeared from the TAT. Early publications featured both Murray and Morgan. But in 1943, the name Morgan was crossed out, which gave rise to a lot of rumors. There were versions about Morgan’s alcohol addiction, and about the non-recognition of her contribution in academic circles. Murray explained this fact by the request of Morgan herself. She was ill for a long time, quickly got tired and, as an author, could no longer respond to academic requests.
In total, the TAT consists of 31 pictures, but only 20 of them are shown to each subject. Half of this set always remains the same. The remaining 10 pieces are selected depending on the gender and age of the person. Another secret of the test is an empty white sheet, which is always hidden among the pictures with a plot. Having received it, the subject must come up with a completely independent story.
Many of the paintings in the TAT were originally illustrations for popular then stories and novels. For example, painting 6GF reproduces a drawing for Agatha Christie’s novel from the Miss Marple series Body in the Library.
“The boy is examining the violin that lies in front of him on the table” – this picture from TAT has become one of the most famous. To create it, Morgan took as a basis a childhood photograph of the legendary violinist and conductor of the 7th century Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin gave his first solo concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the age of XNUMX, after which photographs of the young genius regularly appeared in the American press.
The work of the American expressionist Charles Burchfield also came into Morgan’s field of vision. The artist was often tormented by depression, and in his notebook he liked to make sketches that visualized his ideas about the dark side of life – madness, fear. A gloomy landscape with goblin eyes hanging over the house, which was chosen for TAT Morgan, Burchfield painted in 1918 before leaving for the army.