Describes the Thematic Apperception Test, a systematic approach by which mental-health clinicians can investigate the original and highly personal themes in narratives by individuals. The approach is informed by psychodynamic theory and empirical research. Explains the test's development, the vario
This volume is about a particular kind of storytelling: the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). A systematic approach to storytelling, it provides clinicians with an effective method for investigating those original and highly personal themes that constitute the unique personality of each individual. This book illuminates the meaning of narratives and explores their clinical implications by integrating a variety of interpretive approaches to the TAT that are informed by psychodynamic theory and empirical research. The book opens with an overview of the history and development of the TAT. Chapters discuss the importance of context in storytelling, and the relationship between the storyteller's narrative and the story interpreter's narrative in the process of explicating TAT stories. Several psychodynamically informed approaches to interpreting the TAT are placed in a narrative context and illustrated using stories from college students, children, and patients. The ways that stories transform over time are brought to life in an in-depth analysis of both the narratives from the psychiatric patients and information on the course of their treatments. How narratives can reveal different personality organizations is considered, as are the ways in which stories change according to age, gender, or as a result of defense mechanisms. The final section of the book concentrates on the use of the TAT for research studies. Factors that can confound or disrupt these studies are discussed, such as possible ethnic or gender bias in selection of TAT pictures and the influence of the length on the story. Applying contemporary ideas about narrative thought to the TAT, this book is valuable reading forpsychologists who use the TAT or any narrative material, such as biographies or interviews, for clinical or research purposes. It also serves as a text for a range of advanced courses in clinical psychology, research methods, and personality assessment.
This work is the most comprehensive, original, and creative integration of clinical and empirical approaches to the TAT yet produced. It begins with an emphasis on the multi-modal perspectives inherent in the depiction of the TAT as a narrative, interactive event between story-teller and story-interpreter. The remainder of the book then enacts this conception of narrative by providing multiple, overlapping reviews of the vast array of clinical and empirical investigations of personality using the TAT. Her clinical interpretations of TAT protocols are brilliant and provide outstanding material for the practitioner and teacher alike. Her scholarly review of the reliability and validity of the technique and, more importantly, her critique of the way conventional psychometric standards have misunderstood the essence of the TAT are of great significance in the recent debate about the merits of various assessment procedures. The work is also compelling in its ability to give equal and lucid emphasis to both the clinical/psychodynamic and social psychology/achievement traditions that have historically intertwined as the two primary configuration of TAT use since its introduction 60 years ago. This book is beautifully written, clinically astute, and extraordinarily well documented. It will no doubt be the standard TAT reference for many years to come. --Steven Tuber, Ph.D., ABPP, Director, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, City College Graduate Center, New YorkThe book provides a masterful synthesis of half a century of work on the TAT, placing it in the context of storytelling and narrative approaches to understanding individuals and clinical groups. Dr. Cramer does a particularly good job of integrating interpretative and empirical approaches to the TAT, showing how the interpretation of life narratives and the rigorous psychometric assessment of life narratives can be part of the same enterprise. --Drew Westen, Ph.D., Chief Psychologist, The Cambridge Hospital, and Associate Professor, Dept of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical SchoolThis is a scholarly achievement written in a clear and lucid fashion. Its encyclopedic coverage will be of inestimable value to clinicians and researchers alike. Dr. Cramer also provides a historical background with varied theoretical conceptualizations of Storytelling and Narratives to aid the student in appreciating this age old form of communication. --Carol Eagle, Ph.D., Head, Child and Adolescent Psychology, Montefiore Medical Center; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine -This book is a valuable resource for psychology students at any level who are learning the foundations of projective testing, and it is destined to become standard reading for doctoral students who are enrolled in projective assessment courses....Should be required reading for every clinician who will be administering and interpreting the TAT.--Psychiatric Services, 6/4/2004
