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

previously unexplored, which complement traditional content interpretation and may
contribute considerably to the research knowledge of the field.
The findings do not support the traditional view of colour interpretation. They
do support the broader picture of artistic impoverishment in psychiatric populations.
It was important to establish whether the removal of subjective content from judgements
of paintings allowed diagnostic distinctions. The DAPA demonstrated an ability to make
distinction between paintings from different diagnostic groups. This is consistent with
previous findings using mixed form/content scales but the use of form increased the
reliability of the effect and showed the neglect of the literature in this area since previous
attempts at systematic measurements have been piecemeal and ineffective. The effect
size for this study far exceeds that of content only measures and thus justifies further
research. Though the DAPA worked well, the view of the majority of the literature,
of content based scales as more sensitive than formal elements, is nonetheless supported,
because it was the content features of the DAPA: emotional tone and form which gave
the best and most accurate discrimination.
The main findings of this study are augmented by the literature review in that it
was shown that there was no evidence of privileged knowledge available to art
therapists 342 . Thus the concept of privileged knowledge was unhelpful to the
development of appropriate theory for this area of investigation, and therefore small
samples with long texts on personal interpretation have not been helpful to identifying
342 This has already been recognised for years in the experimental literature, but is not generally acknowledged.
Study by B.I. Levy and E. Ulman (1967) Judging psychopathology from paintings, J. Abnormal Psychology,
V.72(2):182-7.
330