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

molar level and not by individual elements. Thus we can also look to this literature for
an answer. It is this very independence of the whole from its parts that Gestalt is
initially attempting to explain 54 . But, because the effects of a complex system cannot be
predicted from its parts, it does not mean that the appropriate relations cannot be
found 55 .
Projective testing
The projective drawing test has evolved from the search for emotional and
psychiatric 'indicators', inferred from the acknowledged unreliability in scoring on
intelligence measures in psychiatric populations. Psychoanalytic writings describe how
traits and emotions from the disturbed person are ascribed to another (projection).
Projection accompanies a refusal to acknowledge the projected feelings (denial). It
functions as a defence mechanism 56 to protect the individual from repressed anxiety and
conflicts. A projective test is NOT designed to probe the unconscious, but to provide
a forum where desires, needs, beliefs and attitudes are revealed which may not be
consciously known. It systematically assigns emotional, symbolic or expressive value
to particular ways of marking a painting, or to particular images. The advantage of
projective tests over the unstructured single case method is in their systematic
54 The Gestalt concept "has become the explanatory principle from which as a primary given fact, the
phenomena may be deduced", Petermann (1932) op.cit., p.49.
55
Nagel (1952), op.cit. p.140 comments on criterion from Kohler, 1924, who proposes the same argument,
paraphrased by Hogg (1969), loc.cit.
56 Mary Levens (1989), Working with defence mechanisms in art therapy, in Gilroy and Dalley, op.cit.
p.143-6 gives a good description of defence mechanisms.
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