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

application to large numbers. Projective tests are claimed to detect hurt, anxiety,
depression and psychiatric disturbance 57 , however, individual interpretation of the
elements by the therapist is essential, since operational definitions are often ambiguous
or non-existent.
The projective art test assumes that a given drawing represents the self and that
dysfunction in perception of the self will reflect in dysfunction of that representation.
This externalising function of drawing is very important clinically as it presents a way
of communicating outside language. Most projective art tests use the human figure. The
draw-a-person test 58 is a popular intelligence test for IQ or ability measures in normal
children. It uses a friendly medium which is well understood by a child, is not dependent
on language skill and the drawing is rated by a total sum of the recognisable parts of a
figure. Although developed for children, it is regularly used for adult psychiatric patients,
for which population it is yet to prove reliable, since although it correlates highly with
other developmental tests, it consistently over or under estimates individual scores in
normal populations 59 .
57
see Abell et al, (1994) op.cit. for a review; K.G. Aikman, R.W. Belter and A.J. Finch (1992) Human
Figure Drawings: Validity in assessing intellectual level and academic achievement, J.Clin Psychol. ,
V.48(1):114-120) tested 216 child and adolescent psychiatric patients and found more than half
misclassified. Goodenough herself provides an appendix chapter speculating on the distortions expected
in psychiatric populations (1926, op.cit.).
58
see D. Harris (1963), Children's drawings as measures of intellectual maturity , New York: Harcourt
Brace, p.12-36 for a review of the early descriptive and developmental studies; the best known is the
Goodenough-Harris Draw-a-man scale, (F.L. Goodenough and D.B. Harris (1963), The Goodenough-Harris
Drawing Test , New York: Harcourt, Brace, which revised and extended studies by Florence Goodenough
(1926) Measurement of Intelli gence by Drawings , New York: Harcourt Brace.
59
S.C. Abell, A.M. Heiberg and J.E. Johnson (1994), Cognitive Evaluation of Young Adults by Means
of Human Figure Drawings: an empirical validation of 2 methods, J. Clin. Psychol. , V.50(6):900-5; for
a review see L. Slansky, M. Short-Degraff (1989), Validity and Reliability issues with Human Figure
Drawing Assessments, Physical and Occupational Therapy in Paediatrics , V.9(3):127-142; and G.H.
Fabry, and J.E. Bertinetti (1990), A Construct Validation Study of the Human Figure Drawing Test,
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