The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

has then little to do with the artwork itself. The tables show discriminatory properties
for drawing areas.
Alzheimer's disease and brain damage tended to be discriminable on similar indices in
7/13 categories: omitting more essentials, poor quality, bizarre content, poor reality and
logic and poor integration, although brain damage was particularly distinguishable in
drawing angles, so it is reasonable to suppose they share similar qualities which are
particularly apparent in their artwork.
Normal controls were also discriminable in 8/10 categories, generally supplying more
complete paintings without morbid content.
Schizophrenics or psychotics paintings were discriminable from controls through empty
space in the picture, on their inclusion of emotional indicators (which two characteristics
also distinguished within types), and in global measurement of regression.
It is also worth noting that against all commonly believed theory, emotional indicators
drawn as body details did not distinguish sex abuse, but thought disorder.
This organisation of the literature has helped to distinguish reliable categories of
art variables from non-reliable by contrasting similar variables measured by different
studies. However, the observed validity of the drawing procedure is delimited by the
clinical relevance and reliability of the selected drawing features. There are limitations to
those studies; they use small numbers, their interpretation of the figures is questionable,
by and large they are unreplicated, and those few which are replicated seem to produce
inconsistent results. This is consistent with the overall findings reported at the beginning
of this chapter. It is now necessary to further investigate the utility of the classifications
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