ISSUES IN FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY
Projective Drawings

  1. The "Draw-a-Person" (DAP), and the "House-Tree-Person" (H-T-P) procedures, are the projective drawings most frequently used by psychologists.
  2. The DAP and H-T-P are projective techniques. Psychologists who use them assume that subjects project various personality characteristics onto their drawings.
  3. Sharply critical reviews of projective drawings appeared in the literature as long ago as 1957. This 1957 review summarized more than 80 studies related to projective drawings and available at that time. It concluded that the diagnostic utility of projective drawings were not supported by empirical evidence. Subsequent evidence accumulated over the past 40 years overwhelmingly supports the conclusions of the 1957 review.
  4. Studies of the DAP report that paranoid personality features are not necessarily associated with drawings emphasizing elaborate eye detail. Nonetheless, legions of psychologists continue to assume that pronounced eye detail on the DAP is indicative of paranoid personality characteristics.
  5. Another study found no relationship between sex role identification, and the gender of a subject's first drawing. Clinical lore related to the DAP has long assumed that the gender of a subject's initial drawing is quite significant. Once again, however, the empirical evidence fails to support these clinical impressions.
  6. A 1995 study, demonstrating the naivete of psychologists who rely on projective drawings, concluded by emphasizing: "It would seem that therapists [practicing psychologists] tend to find in projectives ... whatever they are already disposed to find ..."

If you would like more information regarding projective drawings, you may want to order following publication authored by Dr. Campbell.

"Cross-Examining Psychologists and Psychiatrists as Expert Witnesses." This is a 79-page, single-spaced outline, containing 214 footnoted references. This outline is bound. (Order article #15, cost $59.00).

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© 2005 Dr. Terence W. Campbell, Ph.D.