The Children's Apperception Test

The Children's Apperception Test  was devised by Leopold Bellak in 1950.  Dr. Bellak was 34 then, and a Viennese born Freudian.  The test uses anthropomorphic animals in order to delve into a child's inner fears and fantasies, and is ambiguous in interpretation.

A anxious child will see this card as a family fleeing some disaster and not as a picnic outing.  The use of talking animals adds a frisson of weird to the entire concept.

I think the concept is clever, but my visits to a psychiatrist as a child were far more antagonistic than these things.

The cub is with the stressed out bear.  His efforts are hindering rather than helping.  How might a child in the middle of a divorce interpret this card?  Do you really think that finding out that a child is upset about his parents separating requires a doctorate in a dubious branch of medicine, let alone as practiced during the Truman administration?

 Here the cub is alone, while his parents snuggle together. The cub is awake.  I imagine that this card got all kinds of interpretations.  The cave depicted is right out of the Freudian playbook, and no doubt was used as proof that the child wanted to return to his mother's womb.  Remember, this 'science' thought that lobotomy was a medically sound procedure.

Today drugs are used instead.

The small chimp is being told to go do something, probably a toilet issue.  On the couch two neighbors or family members are talking secretly in an obvious manner.  There is a picture of a female monkey on the wall surveying the scene, she's probably dead.  The chimp on the left is stroking the gossip's leg with his other right hand. I think all of these monkey's are male.  Florals are the last refuge of the incompetent uphosterer.

This picture has it all.

Fever dream territory.  Goya did stuff like this.  A shadowy adult is behind the happy young chicks about to dig into a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy.  What is usually served with mashed potatoes and gravy?  The chair behind the bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy is empty.

The Disasters Of War, Plate # 76, The Flesh Eating Vulture. Francisco Goya, 1810 - 1820.

For crying out loud.  This is the no - win scenario card.  No matter what the child says about this, he is getting a series of expensive electroshock sessions and a lifelong dependence on Adderall.  But 8 years of that won't be so bad.

This is pretty impressive.  It could be that a child feels insignificant and helpless around an older relative, perhaps one that he has a great deal of respect for.  He would like to help, but what can a mouse do for a lion? 

That would, of course, depend on the mouse.  Reepicheep by Pauline Baynes.

If the kid is well adjusted at the start of this test...

The ultimate WTF card to be showing a child.  This is starting to look like J. Edgar Hoover's version of getting the kid to talk, and fast.

I met my best friend Harvey while I was in an old house staying by myself, and he followed me home to Dallas.  Everyone around me ignores him but he gets his way, always.

I make sure of that.

The following is an example of how a deep anxiety is expressed in the testing situation:

 "The rabbit is sleeping in his bed and it’s in the night and the stars is sleeping, the moon, the sun and the door is wide open, wide, wide open. The door and the windows is open and the curtains is open and the frame is falling. The whole house is breaking. Here’s the boogy man. The boogy man is going to eat him up".

 (CAT-9, 6-year-old, 2005).

I quit taking those pills last week and I've never felt better.  Me n' Harvey are going to go to the old lumberyard and have a hot dog roast!

https://misterscribbles.blogspot.com/

Harvey sure can be bossy sometimes.