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

interpretation of the meaning, quality of colour and emotional associations 314 which have
appeared in the literature and are summarised in table 2. Taking into account the
diagnostic expectations, few of the common interpretations of the meaning or associations
of colours made sense within the placement of diagnostic groups in this study;
observations and experience reported in the literature probably related the colour more
to the content and associations from the subject. The explanation that the affect value
of a colour varies with some other characteristic of the painting 315 would probably
demand a greater variation in the confidence intervals, so cautions from authors presenting
these theories which recommend support from other case related aspects, as with the
interpretations from Tasco are well founded. Generally the controls used more of all
colours except black. This tends to cast suspicion generally on the table of
interpretations since normality should not represent an extreme. Where agreement with
the interpretation was indicated, it was between patient groups but some indications were
contradictory. The lower extremes were split between substance abuse and
schizophrenia.
in the introduction.
314
R.R. Crane and B.I. Levy (1962) Color scales in responses to emotionally laden situations, J.
Consulting Psychology , V.26(6):515-9, different emotional situations lead to different colour scaling; I.G.
Martin, Universal vs learned emotional responses to colors: afterthoughts to thesis research, Arts in
Psychotherapy , V.9:245-7 discusses theoretical confusion of the literature on the relationship between color
and affect, whilst broadly supportive of universal meanings of colour.
315 Levy (1984/1980), op.cit. reported that colour and emotion were related, advised art therapists to
consider colour "yet another source of information about our clients, a valuable guide in forming helpful
reactions based on our clients' art work".
289