Art therapy techniques in psychodiagnostics

Psychologists have long used projective graphic tests to collect information about a client. They carry a double positive meaning. On the one hand, they help to collect important information about the client’s inner world. On the other hand, they are an act of creative self-expression, which in itself is useful, even from the point of view of psychoprophylaxis. Many psychologists and teachers often give their students the following tasks: “Draw a fairy tale country”, “Draw an illustration for your favorite fairy tale”, “Draw your favorite fairy tale character”, etc. Of course, this can also apply to fairy tale therapy, because the task uses a metaphor and an idea transformations.
In the context of fairy tale therapy for projective diagnostics, we use three series of drawings.
The first series explores a person’s attitude to himself, self-perception. It may include such drawings: “What a fabulous creature would I turn into at the entrance to Fairytaleland”, “What would I be bewitched into”, “Magic land of feelings”, “My fancy dress”. Each drawing is done on a separate sheet and is accompanied by the patient’s story.
The family series describes various aspects of the perception of the family and its members by the author of the drawing; includes three drawings: family; family in the form of animals; family in the images of fairy tale characters.
The personal series tells about the features of the personal resource of confronting stressful situations. Includes three drawings: a man – a man in the rain – rain in a fairyland.
Before giving a creative task, a testing procedure for attitude to color is carried out (by analogy with the test of M. Luscher). It would be possible to conduct a standard testing procedure using the Luscher test, but it is almost impossible to select colored pencils whose shades would strictly correspond to the stimulus material. Therefore, we make eight cardboard rectangles, squares or circles; we select a set of colored pencils (8 colors: red, yellow, blue, green, purple, brown, gray, black); we color the cardboard blanks and get our own version of the eight-color dough. The further testing procedure corresponds to the classical one. For children, we use a “fabulous” instruction:
“Imagine that a wonderful butterfly lives in a fairy-tale land. It flies over fields, over forests, over rivers and lakes. And then one day it flew over a clearing on which multi-colored flowers grew (at this moment the presenter opens the stimulus material laid out on a white sheet ) The butterfly circled over the flowers, and she wanted to sit on one of them. Please tell me which flower the butterfly landed on (the child shows, the leader writes down: in the first place such and such a color, then removes the selected color). The butterfly rested and started flying again. And after a while she again found herself in a familiar clearing. What flower did she land on this time? .. “
In such a way that is not tiring for the child, the facilitator receives a sequence of colors arranged in order of preference. The results are entered into a table.
Place 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Color Red Yellow Blue Green Purple Brown Gray Black
Now we know the relation to color. Due to this, some significant errors in the interpretation of the figures can be avoided.
For example, the author of the drawings paints a certain family member yellow. At first glance, we can determine a positive attitude towards this family member. However, yellow is in seventh place in the color choice of the author of the picture. Therefore, such a conclusion was hasty.
Thus, for a series of drawings, it is useful to stock up on stimulus material of your own making, the colors of which strictly correspond to the set of pencils offered for drawing.
After the testing procedure to identify the relationship to color, three sheets of white paper and a set of pencils (8 colors) are placed in front of the client. Instruction: “On the first sheet, please draw your family. Before drawing on the second sheet, imagine that your family members have turned into animals. Draw your family in the form of animals on the second sheet. Before drawing on the third sheet, imagine that your family members got into a fairy tale and thanks to the Good Wizard turn into fairy-tale heroes. Draw your family in the images of fairy-tale heroes on the third sheet.”
The first drawing of the triad will show us the social image of the family; the second will reveal the system of unconscious relationships; the third will reflect the potential of the family from the point of view of the author of the drawings.
Many works are devoted to the interpretation of the family drawing. Therefore, we will not dwell on this in detail. It is important for us to consider the triad from the point of view of the presence of color changes, the nature of interaction, and images.
Analyzing together with the client the drawing of the family in the images of animals, it is important to ask him in detail about the nature of the depicted characters. Sometimes there is a discrepancy between the depicted animal and the attitude towards it. For example, the boy portrayed his father as a wolf. However, talking about him, he says that the wolf is strong, caring, looking for food for the family. It is important not to make hasty conclusions and compare a variety of information. For example, in what place in the color selection are the colors prevailing in the picture. So we learn about the level of emotional comfort in the family (naturally, from the point of view of the author of the picture). I wonder which animals (that is, family members) have the same color. This is how we learn about the unconscious identifications of family members. It is important what size the animal figures are, equal or different in size.
To form a more complete picture of family relationships, you can ask the client to compose a fairy tale about the depicted animals. The writing process begins with the sentence: “Imagine that all the animals depicted in the picture turned out to be a water forest. What story could happen to them?” The tale will more fully reveal the relationship between the characters.
Drawing a family in the images of fairy tale characters is most often done in preferred colors and causes pleasant impressions. The fact is that the transformation was carried out by the Good Wizard. This means that we indirectly asked the author: “Draw the best sides of your family members.” This drawing is an excellent occasion for writing a fairy tale with a good ending, in which a positive way out of the situation will be encrypted.

Creative Therapy Workshop