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

Differences between groups - Space
There wasn't as much variation as expected between the controls and the patients and no
other variable had an effect on space left uncovered in the picture. Small but significant
differences existed, but all groups' paintings lay within the 25-55% space bandwidth and
no group consistently left large amounts of empty space. These findings are curious in
view of the reports from the literature which diverge widely so some explanation is
needed.
I have already indicated the variety of definition of space in the literature, the
most common is perspectival space. Psychiatric patients have been distinguished from
controls on dimensionality of elements or deformation of perspective 322 , but traditional
views of disintegration of perspective, especially in schizophrenic art have latterly been
challenged 323 , although some latter-day studies have also found differences in odd placing
of elements and objects or figures 'floating in space' 324 . The general understanding of this
'space' is difficult to define because it assumes that paper left uncovered is orientated
322 Patient groups are differentiated from controls: for example, the SPAR scale found that patients with
personality disorder scored lower than normal controls on perspectival space (Bergland and Gonzalez
(1993, op.cit.); Miljkovitch and Irvine (1982 op.cit.) found no differences between schizophrenics and
other patients but poor performance generally on space from all patients, and schizophrenics were more
likely to draw planned views than others.
323 Amos (1982) op.cit., reviews most of the essential 1960s and 1970s literature which characterise
schizophrenic disintegration of hierarchical perspective, proportion and logical spatial organisation under
the subheading of 'composition'; Russell-Lacy et al. (1979 op.cit.) found schizophrenics used more two
dimensional space than normal controls although they weren't differentiable from patient controls.
Disagreement in later views: Wadeson's table of characteristics of schizophrenia, depression and mania
report disorganisation, disturbed spatial organisation, disintegration for schizophrenia agree with Amos,
but her own experiments (1976) with schizophrenics showed wide variations (cited in Wadeson 1980,
op.cit. p.190-192); Gantt's experiments with the FEATS study show no differences in use of perspectival
space between 5 groups including controls (1990 op.cit.).
324
Cohen, Hammer and Singer (1988) op.cit.; Bergland and Gonzalez (1993), op.cit.; J.B. Couch (1994),
The Diagnostic Drawing Series: research with older people diagnosed with organic mental syndromes and
disorders, Art Therapy , V.20(3):231-241.
297