Projective Testing

(Copy of a letter to the editor of "Scientific American.")

Although "What's Wrong With This Picture?," in the May 2001 Issue of Scientific American, raised some valid criticisms of many projective instruments, it neglected to mention one of the most practical and valuable.

More than 80 years ago, Alfred Adler pioneered the use of earliest childhood recollections for achieving insight into the unique, core personality dynamics of the individual. After gaining an overview of a new client's presenting problem and current life situation, a Classical Adlerian psychotherapist usually elicits several early recollections, in the context of a childhood history. These recollections reveal not only the original childhood prototype of dealing with life, but the adult's current coping strategies as well. The individual's unique style of life, hidden feelings of inadequacy, and unconscious, compensatory ideal, are embedded in the characters, setting, actions and feelings of the memory.

In over 25 years of practice as a psychotherapist and training analyst, I have found the earliest childhood recollections to be the most useful projective strategy available for gaining an in-depth understanding of an individual, and formulating a treatment plan. If I want to gain another perspective on suspected psychopathology, I will compare the results of an earliest recollection analysis with a full intellectual-psychological-neurological test battery (WAIS, Rorschach, TAT, Bender-Gestalt, sentence-completion, House-Tree-Person, & MMPI) .

Replies:

Re:Projective Testing, by Carroll R. Thomas, 05/08/01 Re:Projective Testing, by Carroll R. Thomas, 06/04/01

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