- Email: [email protected]
Thematic Apperception Analysis as a Forensic Technique
Thematic Apperception Analysis as a Forensic Technique L. R. C. HAWARD Graylingz~ellHospital, Chichester, Sussex, England Thematic Apperception Analysis i s a technique for examining the processes in which h u m a n perception takes o n personal signiJicance in a given individual. I t i s a special form of personality test which has value in forensic psychological investigations. I n addition to a number of standard thematic apperception tests which m a y be used for this ~ u r ~ o si et i, s possible to construct a test specially for the particular case using personal details obtained from interview, medical history, and from the evidence in hand. T h e use qf a specially constructed test in a case of i n decent exposure i s described, and the method of interpreting the results given. T h e problem of presenting psychometric evidence in psychiatric testimony i s mentioned. The most commonly used tests for forensic psychological purposes are those which are said to measure the cognitive functioning of a person (Haward 1960b). Cognition is an intellectual process, so cognitive tests tell us something about the efficiency or capacity which a patient possesses for intellectual thought. Although results on such tests are often affected by emotional processes, and to that extent provide a measure of the degree of functional impairment of intellectual functioning, they can tell us little about the nature of the emotional forces which are causing this impairment. For example, when a young child is taken to hospital, his scores on an intelligence test may drop by as much as 20%. This discrepancy between his obvious abilities in a normal setting and those measured immediately after admission is termed "hospitalisation stress" (Haward, 1953) ; it provides us with a quantitative measure of emotional interference, but says little about the nature of such an interference. I t can thus be seen that some other type of psychometric investigation is necessary if we wish t o know more about the emotional forces which affect our everyday living-we cannot explore these with cognitive tests. Projective Tests The tests which the psychologist would use in this connection are generally classified in a very broad manner (and loose way of thinking) as 'personality tests'. This category is so wide as to be quite useless for the classification of tests, for it covers the whole gamut from simple tests of one particular traitsuch as the propensity for lying-to a comprehensive test which allegedly measures every psychological aspect of the patient, and which may be used as the basis of a two thousand word report. The Maudsley Lie Scale (Eysenck, 1961) is an example of the former, and the Rorschach Inkblots Test (Rorschach, 1942) of the latter. Of those tests or methods which come within the province of the forensic psychologist and which have immediate relevance to his work probably the most important are those called 'projective tests'. The projective test provides material, which might be visual, auditory, or even tactile, which requires interpretation. An essential feature of any projective test material is that it possesses some degree of perceptual ambiguity, that is, the material is so designed that it is not clear to the patient what exactly the material is supposed to represent. I n the case of pictures, they will be so vague that no common line of interpretation exists ; the situation will be ambigious, and the characters themselves so vague that they might be of either sex, of any age, and 209
engaged in a variety of occupations. The test designer has purposely destroyed the clues which in everyday life enable us to be certain about these things. If the material is auditory, consisting of a record or tape-recording, then certain critical words will be deliberately faded, or else some form of extraneous signal in the form of noise will tend to obscure them. In tactile material, the fact that the patient is blindfolded means that he is already deprived of the more important clues to which he has become accustomed ; in addition, the material itself is usually uncommon (Smith and Madan, 1953) and, therefore, does not form part of the former experience of the patient. Of the many types of projective test now available, perhaps the Thematic Apperception Test is most closely allied to the needs of forensic psychology, and Salfield (1953) has already underlined its value in diagnosis.
Apperception Perception is the means of gaining knowledge of reality. I t is a sensation moulded and construed according to the condition of the nervous system. We can never "know" sensation as such, for it has to be interpreted by the brain before we are consciously aware of it. The processes of interpretation can alter the nature of the sensation profoundly, and this is what happens under hypnosis, when studying an illusion or in some psychotic hallucinatory condition. After finally arriving a t a perception, we integrate it into the body of our experience and imbue it with meaning relative to that experience ; this is apperception. An Apperception Test is, therefore, a means of examining the process by which we clothe our perceptions with meaning. I t is not a test of perception as such, because all normal individuals will report that they perceive the same thing-a blot, a shadowy picture, and indistinct passage of recorded speech, and so on. However, as soon as one asks, what these perceptions mean to them, we enter the wonderful world of apperception, where no two individuals can possibly respond in exactly the same way. The particularly individual nature of apperception has been shown not only in studies of twins but in studies of multiple personality (Thigpen and Cleckley, 1957). The latter case of triple personality which has been widely reported furnishes us with an excellent example of intra-individual contradictory traits produced by different states of mind. The Apperception Test most used to-day is the Thematic Apperception Test of Murray (1943). This consists of twenty cards with alternatives for children and adults and for the two sexes separately. In most cases the pictures themselves are quite clearly drawn, but the situation depicted is not definitive. I t is like looking a t the picture illustrating a novel without having read the book first, or like going into a cinema in the middle of a film. The picture on the screen is quite clear, but the plot is a mystery until the threads have been picked up. Murray's pictures have been so devised to provide all the usual interpersonal relationships. The picture may portray one person by himself, or with another of the same age group, or with a parental-type figure, or in a group of people. In some cases there is no person present. The full set of these pictures covers all the usual family relationships, brother-sister, fatherson, husband-wife, and so on. A recent modification of this test, the Object Relations Test, devised by Phillipson (1959) has a much greater degree of ambiguity than Murray's cards provide, and thus one of the two-figure cards of Phillipson can be utilised by the patient to portray father and son or wife and mother-in-law with equal ease. Test Analysis The patient is comfortably seated and given the first picture. He is asked to make up a story about it, to say what events led up to the situation he now apperceives, what the present situation is about, and how it will end. As far as is practicable his response is copied verbatim or else recorded. In the subsequent record there is much that we can learn of our patient. What was
his response time? That is, how much time elapsed between giving him the card and his opening remark. Was it immediate (manic or hysteric) or excessively long (depressive). Was it consistent with the response times of other patients. Was it influenced by the nuances of the card. What card or cards produced an abnormally long response time? This suggests some form of emotional blocking-what is there on this particular card, or what common features exist in this group of cards, that make him unable to respond as quickly as he normally does. Whatever this feature is, it is of psychological significance. How often does he use personal pronouns in the first person, i.e., how egocentric is he? Is his mastery of vocabulary good or poor? Does it show the pedantry of the compulsive neurotic, the neologisms of the psychotic? Is he uncertain ; does he give his responses in a question form? Is he definite and dogmatic or cautious in giving alternative interpretations, or defensive and denying any knowledge of the theme a t all? These and many other questions are answered by the purely formal aspect of his verbal response. Often this is enough to provide a diagnosis. But the forensic psychologist wants more than a diagnosis, for he is looking for practical clues to guilt or motivation. This is where the content of the response is important. The content is examined in two ways, from the study of the responses to an individual card, and from a general survey of the whole record. In examining the card responses individually, the advantage of a standardised set such as Murray's becomes clear. In the card depicting a young man in a room with an elderly woman who has her back to him, for example, the normal response is to interpret this as a mother-son situation. If the patient does not see this as a mother and son, we must ask ourselves what abnormal process of thought has converted this into the interpretation we have been given. Consider the following response, given by a woman who had confessed to committing a crime but whose vague and confused statements were insufficient to enable confirmatory evidence to be sought. "The woman is sad. She cannot bear to face her husband. She feels full of guilt. (Examiner : 'What makes her feel guilty'). She has led a sinful life. She is not good enough for him. She deserves to be abandoned. (Examiner; And what will happen after this). He won't desert her, much as she deserves it. He is very loyal. He won't desert her in her trouble. But she'll get her deserts. Oh! Yes, she'll have to pay for it." An intelligent, middle-aged woman gave this response. She took a long time before she started speaking, and there were long pauses between each sentence. Before she could obey the instructions she had to be questioned twice by the examiner in order to stimulate her into talking. She uses short sentences, despite her good scholastic background. The formal structure of the response, therefore, carries indications that she is suffering from depressive retardation. Her theme confirms this. She is pre-occupied with guilt and self-condemnation, yet, this is based on a diffuse cause. (In this respect it differs markedly from a reactive depression where the cause is more circumscribed and external). I t may be hypothesized that because of her delusions of guilt she fears her husband will desert her. This fear is strong and to the forefront of her mind-she twice denies the possibility of his leaving her, and because of this she apperceives the male figure as that of her husband and not as a son. Possibly by confessing to a crime she did not commit, she hopes to atone for her imagined guilt and relieve her oppressive need for punishment. Alternative hypotheses are similarly plausible. Which one is likely to be the true one will be shown when the record is examined as a whole. So gradually, card by card, a full assessment of the patient's needs and stresses is built up. Certain more or less permanent personality traits may emerge, as when the central figure of the same sex as the patient's is always engaged in extraverted activity, or is always indulging in compulsive or obsessional behaviour patterns. But the chief value of a test of this sort is the complex 211
picture it provides of the person's psycho-dynamics, viz., what the patient feels about this or that person, what his main pre-occupations, fears, or needs are, what kind of situation produces strong emotional disturbances ; in short, all the things the psychologist is likely to want to know.
A personalised test In most judicial circumstances it is useful to construct a special set of pictures based on the significent features of the case history which are personal to one particular individual only. Besowitz, for example, has prepared a special series of pictures for investigating anxiety in a parachutist. Haward (1961) prepared a special series based on the scene of a murder and using relevant items of evidence to investigate the amnesia of a man charged with the crime. If one wishes to keep tlie material very ambiguous, simple line drawings, or brush sketches in monochrome done by the psychologist himself (even when devoid of artistic talent) will generally suffice. But for more precise work photographs are better : in most cases the necessary element of ambiguity can be introduced by blurring the picture slightly with an incorrect focus, or by the use of a diffusion filter or soft-focus lens. This has the effect of destroying the identity of the people portrayed, and of the location of the scene : it provides a sufficient degree of ambiguity for the patient to project his psychological needs into the situation. I t is usually possible to extract from the case history some ten incidents which prima facie appear to be of aetiological significance. These can then be illustrated with the assistance of one or two people, usually members of the psychology department or members of the Actors' Union, and a medical or forensic photographer. Thus for a modest outlay of time and expense, it is possible to provide suitable projective material which is specially devised for the particular offender. As an example, here are ten extracts from the case notes of a man of forty charged by the police with indecent exposure ; together with a description of the photographic Apperception Cards specially prepared from them by the author : 1. I was an only child. My father left home when I was six years old. I cannot remember anything about him. 2. My mother and I were always good pals. We are still very united. 3. When I left school I was apprenticed to some engineers. I was very happy there. 4. When the war broke out I joined the Air Force as a fitter. I t was hard work but I liked it. 5. It was then that I met my wife who was in the W.A.A.F. 6. We married after a few months courtship, and the following year had a baby daughter. 7. We have always been very happy, never a quarrel. Her mother lives with us and she and I are great friends. 8. My daughter is now grown up and still lives with us. She will marry in due course, I expect, but she is a sensible girl and is in no hurry.
Boy stands watching man with large suitcase who has his back to him. Woman looks a t boy who is showing her some object. Two youths a t a bench which has vague machinery on it. An older man looks on. Back view of three men bent over something, examining it. Man in peaked cap showing some object to a woman. Man and a woman are walking along. A young girl points to one side. Man is talking to elderly woman, while another woman of his own age stands by. Woman turns round startled as man taps her on shoulder; behind, older woman shades eyes and peers intently in direction to which a young girl is pointing.
9. When I left the services I got a job as a fitter and I have been there ever since. I am very happy a t work.
9. Three men a t a bench leaning over some object which centre man is holding.
10. I have absolutely no worries and can't remember doing such an awful thing. I t was just the same the first time I was caught, I couldn't remember anything about it.
10. Back of man, standing with feet apart, arms in front suggesting hands a t pubic area. One older woman in front is facing him, also two younger women. All are staring.
Now a t its face value this is a perfectly innocent case history in which there is nothing to suggest a motive for the sexual aberration. At the Magistrates Court the offender was remanded for a week so that a psychiatric assessment could be made. The psychiatrist reported that there was nothing psychiatrically wrong with the man. When the latter learned of this he appealed to his solicitor to find someone who could help him. The author was asked to conduct a psychological investigation of the case and to give evidence on the man's behalf. Ten Apperception Cards were prepared as described above and administered to the patient, together with other psychometric tests. The essence of his stories is given below : The boy envies the man. The latter is not going to be bossed around, he can walk out whenever he wants. The whole theme is envious desire for a masculine dominant role in life. The boy has no privacy, everything he does must be seen and Picture 2. approved by the mother. The theme is of mildly resented motherdominance and control. The youths enjoy work, feeling free of home influences. One boy Picture 3. envies the other's sophistication and the foreman's authoritative personality. The theme is desire for domestic escape and envy of men free from domination. A neutral theme of masculine interests, with repeated statements Picture 4. that men can only be men when women are absent. The hero of the story finds psychological support in the company of other men. A story of a predatory female emerges, in which she goes to great Picture 5. lengths to secure the attention of the male. The latter is obviously satisfied by the outcome but would not have initiated the alliance. A simple domestic story with some regret expressed that the Picture 6. child was a girl. The mother is glad it is a girl but the father would have preferred a boy. The story is of a man whose life is spent appeasing women ; he Picture 7. must always acquiesce in others' plans, he can never plan for himself. The theme is of a young girl seeing danger ahead. They do not Picture 8. know what to do to avoid it. The man seeks the support of his wife before taking any action. Almost a repetition of story No. 4, with strong sympathy for Picture 9. exclusively masculine interests, envy of other men and expressed pleasure a t being with his own sex. Picture 10. A man exposing himself ; the women are surprised that his organ could be so big ; they did not think he was such a man as that. The theme is of masculinity expressed in its most manifest form. The women envy him for being a man. Picture 1.
213
If now we synthesize the stories into one comprehensive theme, the picture emerges of a boy deprived of paternal masculine support and falling under excessive maternal dominance. He envies other men their freedom and is only happy in masculine company. With women he feels inferior, and this has been exacerbated by marriage to another dominant woman who has traits similar to his mother's. The coming of a daughter, who by virtue of her sex must come rather under the mother's guidance and control than the father's, gives an even greater sense of inferiority, and the situation becomes a more or less permanent one when the man finds himself in a menage consisting of three dominant women and himself. This picture appears to mirror faithfully enough the real situation : how conscious is the patient of this? Certainly he is not immediately aware of the implications of his stories. In the first interview, no criticism against women in general or his wife, mother or daughter in particular, could be elicited. He persistently maintained how happy his home life was, and appeared to be genuinely fond of his wife and daughter. He spoke only in the highest and most affectionate terms of his mother. Was he deliberately concealing his antipathy, or was this avowed affection a reaction formation? After receiving the test he was asked to describe in general terms the sort of person he had been looking at, and afterwards to give the similarities and differences between himself and this imaginary character. These were such that it was at once obvious that he was not consciously identifying himself with the hero of his themes, although in some respects they were very much alike. I t is interesting to note that he felt closest to the hero in the all-male pictures, and least like him in those pictures involving women. Whilst he agreed that in Picture No. 10 both he and the hero had committed the same offence, he denied that the victims of his exposure reacted in the same way. He claimed to have no possible motive for committing this act, felt no satisfaction for having done so and denied any feeling of pride in the commission. One of the advantages of apperception testing-or disadvantages, according to the way one looks a t itis that there are different levels of interpretation open to one. The stories can be analysed a t their face value ; they can be studied a t a superficial level to derive their conscious but suppressed meaning, or they can be analysed a t greater depth to investigate the unconscious elements of the problem and in particular those elements under repression.
Use of Test In this present case, two levels were utilised. First a report was prepared for the Court, in which a simple explanation was given of the man's early life under increasing maternal domination and without paternal support. I t was explained that the strong feelings of inferiority engendered during the latency period were augmented by difficulties during adolescence, and finally established once the accused was living with three dominant women. The Court was told that given the need to prove himself as a man-and the tests had shown this need to be both present and urgent-then the most obvious means for fulfilling this need would be by indecent exposure. The Court were sympathetic towards this explanation, and having been told that treatment had been offered to the man and accepted by him subject to the Court's leniency, placed him on probation, despite the fact that on the former occasion the same Court had fined him £10 for a first offence and promised a prison sentence for a second occurrence. The second and deeper level of interpretation was used for obtaining material for the therapist, and this is now being used with some success and producing a very favourable prognosis. Naturally, the manner of interpretation will depend very much on the particular theoretical position occupied by the therapist. A Freudian will consider the psychosexual basis of the themes, an Adlerian the compensatory adjustments which the hero is attempting to make. The Jungian will examine the archetypes, developing in this as in many others, the compensatory functions of the archetypical feminity and trying to make 214
them conscious, and the Wolpian will look for personality traits on which behaviour therapy can be based. Each type of therapist extracts from the material the interpretations best suited to his own theory of a patient's needs. If it is true, as Eysenck claims, that all established methods of psychotherapy are equally successful, we need not worry unduly about the use to which we put the material. What is obviously important is that Thematic Apperception material contains much which cannot be easily obtained in other ways. Whether the psychologist uses a standard set of cards or devises his own, he can be sure that by their use his knowledge of the accused person is considerably enriched. Thematic Apperception analysis is a special technique which has been utilised on a number of occasions to provide the basis of expert psychological testimony offered to the Court (Haward, 1959, 1960, 1961ab, 1963 ab, 1964 abcde). Of unproven validity when used by itself, in the context of standardised psychological and physiological tests it provides data which clothes the bare bones of the personality structure and gives personal meaning to the preceding events leading up to the judicial proceedings. I t has been explained elsewhere that the psychologist offers expert testimony at three stages of the proceedings : at the stage of proving actus reus, when evidence is often largely circumstantial and all the errors of perception and memory are involved ; in proof of mens rea when clinical investigations can often furnish evidence rebutting the onus of criminal responsibility as in the case of the lady suffering from psychotic depression mentioned earlier, and, thirdly, in producing evidence in extenuation or mitigation which assists the Court in deciding the sentence. At each stage, Thematic Apperception can play an important supportive role in augmenting the psychologist's knowledge of the accused.
Rule of Hearsay The increasing use of psychological testing of accused persons referred by the Court for medical examination does bring to light one problem which exists in the presentation of psychological evidence. At present most psychiatrists embody the report of the psychologist into their own report to the Court. Generally the Court is unaware of this, although the matter is not important when the psychologist's report is purely factual and quantitative, for example, in terms of an Intelligence Quotient. Very often, however, the psychologist's report itself is an opinion based on psychometric data. The inclusion of such an opinion in the psychiatrist's report then infringes the Rules of Hearsay, for the psychiatrist is giving an opinion upon an opinion based upon facts of which the psychiatrist is not generally aware. This is unsatisfactory for both the psychologist and the psychiatrist, since the latter cannot be examined or cross-examined about facts of which he is both unaware and unqualified to interpret, while the former is in such circumstances not given the opportunity to explain and qualify his original statement made to the psychiatrist but expressly for the Court purposes. Moreover, the Court is unaware that the Law of Evidence is being flouted in this way. This is the reason why in High Court proceedings the psychologist is being called more frequently as an expert, in his own right. His evidence in no way infringes upon that of the psychiatrist but supplements it, providing quantitative information of particular value in assessing the criminal responsibility of the accused. To be valid even the Thematic Apperception analysis must first be quantified and the abnormality of the testee's response expressed in terms of statistical significance, but figures themselves take on different meanings according to the context in which they are presented. For this reason the psychologist must interpret the Apperception data to the Court ; but psychology, like all sciences, proceeds by a process of successive approximations. However reliable its data, the validity of its findings ultimately depend upon the skill and the experience of the psychologist in the interpretation of such data, and in the interests of justice the Court should be given the opportunity to assess its probity by examining 215
the psychologist in the witness box. By entering caselaw in this way, psychological evidence will find its own level of relevance and value in the scheme of things : In such a context Thematic Apperception Analysis may well achieve general recognition as one of the more useful psychometric tools of forensic science. References EYSENCK, H. J., 1961, Maudsley Personality Inventory, London : Univ. London Press. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1953, Hospitalisation Stress, Med. World, 79, 126-130. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1959, The Psychologist in a Court of Law, Bull. Brit. Psychol. SOC.,39, 1-8. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1960a, Scane v. Ainger, Bull. Brit. Psychol. Soc., 41, 26A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1960b, Practical Psychodiagnostics, Psychotherajby, 1, 11-16. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1961a, Forensic Psychology, Bull Brit. Psychol. Soc., 43, 1-5. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1961b, Psychological Evidence, J. For. Sci. Soc., 2, 8-18. HAWARD,L. R. C., 1963a, Some Psychological Aspects of Parole evidence, Brit. J . Criminol, 15, 342-360. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1963b, Reliability of Corroborated Police Evidence, J. For. Sci. SOC.,3, 71-78. HAWARD,L. R. C., 1964a, Psychological Experiments and Judicial Doubt, Bull. Brit. Psychol. Soc., 1, 5A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964b, Psychology in the Magistrates Courts, Bull. Bril. Psychol. Soc., 17, 23A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964c, Alguns aspectos psicologicos da prova testamentral, Revista Brasiliera da Criminol., 2, 17-35. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964d, The Psychologists contribution to legal procedure, Modern Law Review (in press). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964e, Psychology in Courts of Petty Session, Law Times 235, 495-513, MURRAY,H. A., 1943, Thematic Apperception Test, Harvard Univ, Press, Cambridge, Mass. PHILLIPSON, H. H., 1959, The Object Relations Technique, Tavistock, London. H., 1942, Psychodiagnostics, Hans Huber, Berne. RORSCHACH, SALFIELD,D. J., 1953, Ein Hilfsmittel Fiir die psychosomatische Diagnose Praxis, 32, 672-473. SMITH,F. V., and MADAN,S. K., 1953, A Kinaesthetic projective test, Brit. J. Psychol., 44, 156. THIGPEN, C. H.. and CLECKLEY, H. M., 1957, The Three Faces of Eve, London.
engaged in a variety of occupations. The test designer has purposely destroyed the clues which in everyday life enable us to be certain about these things. If the material is auditory, consisting of a record or tape-recording, then certain critical words will be deliberately faded, or else some form of extraneous signal in the form of noise will tend to obscure them. In tactile material, the fact that the patient is blindfolded means that he is already deprived of the more important clues to which he has become accustomed ; in addition, the material itself is usually uncommon (Smith and Madan, 1953) and, therefore, does not form part of the former experience of the patient. Of the many types of projective test now available, perhaps the Thematic Apperception Test is most closely allied to the needs of forensic psychology, and Salfield (1953) has already underlined its value in diagnosis.
Apperception Perception is the means of gaining knowledge of reality. I t is a sensation moulded and construed according to the condition of the nervous system. We can never "know" sensation as such, for it has to be interpreted by the brain before we are consciously aware of it. The processes of interpretation can alter the nature of the sensation profoundly, and this is what happens under hypnosis, when studying an illusion or in some psychotic hallucinatory condition. After finally arriving a t a perception, we integrate it into the body of our experience and imbue it with meaning relative to that experience ; this is apperception. An Apperception Test is, therefore, a means of examining the process by which we clothe our perceptions with meaning. I t is not a test of perception as such, because all normal individuals will report that they perceive the same thing-a blot, a shadowy picture, and indistinct passage of recorded speech, and so on. However, as soon as one asks, what these perceptions mean to them, we enter the wonderful world of apperception, where no two individuals can possibly respond in exactly the same way. The particularly individual nature of apperception has been shown not only in studies of twins but in studies of multiple personality (Thigpen and Cleckley, 1957). The latter case of triple personality which has been widely reported furnishes us with an excellent example of intra-individual contradictory traits produced by different states of mind. The Apperception Test most used to-day is the Thematic Apperception Test of Murray (1943). This consists of twenty cards with alternatives for children and adults and for the two sexes separately. In most cases the pictures themselves are quite clearly drawn, but the situation depicted is not definitive. I t is like looking a t the picture illustrating a novel without having read the book first, or like going into a cinema in the middle of a film. The picture on the screen is quite clear, but the plot is a mystery until the threads have been picked up. Murray's pictures have been so devised to provide all the usual interpersonal relationships. The picture may portray one person by himself, or with another of the same age group, or with a parental-type figure, or in a group of people. In some cases there is no person present. The full set of these pictures covers all the usual family relationships, brother-sister, fatherson, husband-wife, and so on. A recent modification of this test, the Object Relations Test, devised by Phillipson (1959) has a much greater degree of ambiguity than Murray's cards provide, and thus one of the two-figure cards of Phillipson can be utilised by the patient to portray father and son or wife and mother-in-law with equal ease. Test Analysis The patient is comfortably seated and given the first picture. He is asked to make up a story about it, to say what events led up to the situation he now apperceives, what the present situation is about, and how it will end. As far as is practicable his response is copied verbatim or else recorded. In the subsequent record there is much that we can learn of our patient. What was
his response time? That is, how much time elapsed between giving him the card and his opening remark. Was it immediate (manic or hysteric) or excessively long (depressive). Was it consistent with the response times of other patients. Was it influenced by the nuances of the card. What card or cards produced an abnormally long response time? This suggests some form of emotional blocking-what is there on this particular card, or what common features exist in this group of cards, that make him unable to respond as quickly as he normally does. Whatever this feature is, it is of psychological significance. How often does he use personal pronouns in the first person, i.e., how egocentric is he? Is his mastery of vocabulary good or poor? Does it show the pedantry of the compulsive neurotic, the neologisms of the psychotic? Is he uncertain ; does he give his responses in a question form? Is he definite and dogmatic or cautious in giving alternative interpretations, or defensive and denying any knowledge of the theme a t all? These and many other questions are answered by the purely formal aspect of his verbal response. Often this is enough to provide a diagnosis. But the forensic psychologist wants more than a diagnosis, for he is looking for practical clues to guilt or motivation. This is where the content of the response is important. The content is examined in two ways, from the study of the responses to an individual card, and from a general survey of the whole record. In examining the card responses individually, the advantage of a standardised set such as Murray's becomes clear. In the card depicting a young man in a room with an elderly woman who has her back to him, for example, the normal response is to interpret this as a mother-son situation. If the patient does not see this as a mother and son, we must ask ourselves what abnormal process of thought has converted this into the interpretation we have been given. Consider the following response, given by a woman who had confessed to committing a crime but whose vague and confused statements were insufficient to enable confirmatory evidence to be sought. "The woman is sad. She cannot bear to face her husband. She feels full of guilt. (Examiner : 'What makes her feel guilty'). She has led a sinful life. She is not good enough for him. She deserves to be abandoned. (Examiner; And what will happen after this). He won't desert her, much as she deserves it. He is very loyal. He won't desert her in her trouble. But she'll get her deserts. Oh! Yes, she'll have to pay for it." An intelligent, middle-aged woman gave this response. She took a long time before she started speaking, and there were long pauses between each sentence. Before she could obey the instructions she had to be questioned twice by the examiner in order to stimulate her into talking. She uses short sentences, despite her good scholastic background. The formal structure of the response, therefore, carries indications that she is suffering from depressive retardation. Her theme confirms this. She is pre-occupied with guilt and self-condemnation, yet, this is based on a diffuse cause. (In this respect it differs markedly from a reactive depression where the cause is more circumscribed and external). I t may be hypothesized that because of her delusions of guilt she fears her husband will desert her. This fear is strong and to the forefront of her mind-she twice denies the possibility of his leaving her, and because of this she apperceives the male figure as that of her husband and not as a son. Possibly by confessing to a crime she did not commit, she hopes to atone for her imagined guilt and relieve her oppressive need for punishment. Alternative hypotheses are similarly plausible. Which one is likely to be the true one will be shown when the record is examined as a whole. So gradually, card by card, a full assessment of the patient's needs and stresses is built up. Certain more or less permanent personality traits may emerge, as when the central figure of the same sex as the patient's is always engaged in extraverted activity, or is always indulging in compulsive or obsessional behaviour patterns. But the chief value of a test of this sort is the complex 211
picture it provides of the person's psycho-dynamics, viz., what the patient feels about this or that person, what his main pre-occupations, fears, or needs are, what kind of situation produces strong emotional disturbances ; in short, all the things the psychologist is likely to want to know.
A personalised test In most judicial circumstances it is useful to construct a special set of pictures based on the significent features of the case history which are personal to one particular individual only. Besowitz, for example, has prepared a special series of pictures for investigating anxiety in a parachutist. Haward (1961) prepared a special series based on the scene of a murder and using relevant items of evidence to investigate the amnesia of a man charged with the crime. If one wishes to keep tlie material very ambiguous, simple line drawings, or brush sketches in monochrome done by the psychologist himself (even when devoid of artistic talent) will generally suffice. But for more precise work photographs are better : in most cases the necessary element of ambiguity can be introduced by blurring the picture slightly with an incorrect focus, or by the use of a diffusion filter or soft-focus lens. This has the effect of destroying the identity of the people portrayed, and of the location of the scene : it provides a sufficient degree of ambiguity for the patient to project his psychological needs into the situation. I t is usually possible to extract from the case history some ten incidents which prima facie appear to be of aetiological significance. These can then be illustrated with the assistance of one or two people, usually members of the psychology department or members of the Actors' Union, and a medical or forensic photographer. Thus for a modest outlay of time and expense, it is possible to provide suitable projective material which is specially devised for the particular offender. As an example, here are ten extracts from the case notes of a man of forty charged by the police with indecent exposure ; together with a description of the photographic Apperception Cards specially prepared from them by the author : 1. I was an only child. My father left home when I was six years old. I cannot remember anything about him. 2. My mother and I were always good pals. We are still very united. 3. When I left school I was apprenticed to some engineers. I was very happy there. 4. When the war broke out I joined the Air Force as a fitter. I t was hard work but I liked it. 5. It was then that I met my wife who was in the W.A.A.F. 6. We married after a few months courtship, and the following year had a baby daughter. 7. We have always been very happy, never a quarrel. Her mother lives with us and she and I are great friends. 8. My daughter is now grown up and still lives with us. She will marry in due course, I expect, but she is a sensible girl and is in no hurry.
Boy stands watching man with large suitcase who has his back to him. Woman looks a t boy who is showing her some object. Two youths a t a bench which has vague machinery on it. An older man looks on. Back view of three men bent over something, examining it. Man in peaked cap showing some object to a woman. Man and a woman are walking along. A young girl points to one side. Man is talking to elderly woman, while another woman of his own age stands by. Woman turns round startled as man taps her on shoulder; behind, older woman shades eyes and peers intently in direction to which a young girl is pointing.
9. When I left the services I got a job as a fitter and I have been there ever since. I am very happy a t work.
9. Three men a t a bench leaning over some object which centre man is holding.
10. I have absolutely no worries and can't remember doing such an awful thing. I t was just the same the first time I was caught, I couldn't remember anything about it.
10. Back of man, standing with feet apart, arms in front suggesting hands a t pubic area. One older woman in front is facing him, also two younger women. All are staring.
Now a t its face value this is a perfectly innocent case history in which there is nothing to suggest a motive for the sexual aberration. At the Magistrates Court the offender was remanded for a week so that a psychiatric assessment could be made. The psychiatrist reported that there was nothing psychiatrically wrong with the man. When the latter learned of this he appealed to his solicitor to find someone who could help him. The author was asked to conduct a psychological investigation of the case and to give evidence on the man's behalf. Ten Apperception Cards were prepared as described above and administered to the patient, together with other psychometric tests. The essence of his stories is given below : The boy envies the man. The latter is not going to be bossed around, he can walk out whenever he wants. The whole theme is envious desire for a masculine dominant role in life. The boy has no privacy, everything he does must be seen and Picture 2. approved by the mother. The theme is of mildly resented motherdominance and control. The youths enjoy work, feeling free of home influences. One boy Picture 3. envies the other's sophistication and the foreman's authoritative personality. The theme is desire for domestic escape and envy of men free from domination. A neutral theme of masculine interests, with repeated statements Picture 4. that men can only be men when women are absent. The hero of the story finds psychological support in the company of other men. A story of a predatory female emerges, in which she goes to great Picture 5. lengths to secure the attention of the male. The latter is obviously satisfied by the outcome but would not have initiated the alliance. A simple domestic story with some regret expressed that the Picture 6. child was a girl. The mother is glad it is a girl but the father would have preferred a boy. The story is of a man whose life is spent appeasing women ; he Picture 7. must always acquiesce in others' plans, he can never plan for himself. The theme is of a young girl seeing danger ahead. They do not Picture 8. know what to do to avoid it. The man seeks the support of his wife before taking any action. Almost a repetition of story No. 4, with strong sympathy for Picture 9. exclusively masculine interests, envy of other men and expressed pleasure a t being with his own sex. Picture 10. A man exposing himself ; the women are surprised that his organ could be so big ; they did not think he was such a man as that. The theme is of masculinity expressed in its most manifest form. The women envy him for being a man. Picture 1.
213
If now we synthesize the stories into one comprehensive theme, the picture emerges of a boy deprived of paternal masculine support and falling under excessive maternal dominance. He envies other men their freedom and is only happy in masculine company. With women he feels inferior, and this has been exacerbated by marriage to another dominant woman who has traits similar to his mother's. The coming of a daughter, who by virtue of her sex must come rather under the mother's guidance and control than the father's, gives an even greater sense of inferiority, and the situation becomes a more or less permanent one when the man finds himself in a menage consisting of three dominant women and himself. This picture appears to mirror faithfully enough the real situation : how conscious is the patient of this? Certainly he is not immediately aware of the implications of his stories. In the first interview, no criticism against women in general or his wife, mother or daughter in particular, could be elicited. He persistently maintained how happy his home life was, and appeared to be genuinely fond of his wife and daughter. He spoke only in the highest and most affectionate terms of his mother. Was he deliberately concealing his antipathy, or was this avowed affection a reaction formation? After receiving the test he was asked to describe in general terms the sort of person he had been looking at, and afterwards to give the similarities and differences between himself and this imaginary character. These were such that it was at once obvious that he was not consciously identifying himself with the hero of his themes, although in some respects they were very much alike. I t is interesting to note that he felt closest to the hero in the all-male pictures, and least like him in those pictures involving women. Whilst he agreed that in Picture No. 10 both he and the hero had committed the same offence, he denied that the victims of his exposure reacted in the same way. He claimed to have no possible motive for committing this act, felt no satisfaction for having done so and denied any feeling of pride in the commission. One of the advantages of apperception testing-or disadvantages, according to the way one looks a t itis that there are different levels of interpretation open to one. The stories can be analysed a t their face value ; they can be studied a t a superficial level to derive their conscious but suppressed meaning, or they can be analysed a t greater depth to investigate the unconscious elements of the problem and in particular those elements under repression.
Use of Test In this present case, two levels were utilised. First a report was prepared for the Court, in which a simple explanation was given of the man's early life under increasing maternal domination and without paternal support. I t was explained that the strong feelings of inferiority engendered during the latency period were augmented by difficulties during adolescence, and finally established once the accused was living with three dominant women. The Court was told that given the need to prove himself as a man-and the tests had shown this need to be both present and urgent-then the most obvious means for fulfilling this need would be by indecent exposure. The Court were sympathetic towards this explanation, and having been told that treatment had been offered to the man and accepted by him subject to the Court's leniency, placed him on probation, despite the fact that on the former occasion the same Court had fined him £10 for a first offence and promised a prison sentence for a second occurrence. The second and deeper level of interpretation was used for obtaining material for the therapist, and this is now being used with some success and producing a very favourable prognosis. Naturally, the manner of interpretation will depend very much on the particular theoretical position occupied by the therapist. A Freudian will consider the psychosexual basis of the themes, an Adlerian the compensatory adjustments which the hero is attempting to make. The Jungian will examine the archetypes, developing in this as in many others, the compensatory functions of the archetypical feminity and trying to make 214
them conscious, and the Wolpian will look for personality traits on which behaviour therapy can be based. Each type of therapist extracts from the material the interpretations best suited to his own theory of a patient's needs. If it is true, as Eysenck claims, that all established methods of psychotherapy are equally successful, we need not worry unduly about the use to which we put the material. What is obviously important is that Thematic Apperception material contains much which cannot be easily obtained in other ways. Whether the psychologist uses a standard set of cards or devises his own, he can be sure that by their use his knowledge of the accused person is considerably enriched. Thematic Apperception analysis is a special technique which has been utilised on a number of occasions to provide the basis of expert psychological testimony offered to the Court (Haward, 1959, 1960, 1961ab, 1963 ab, 1964 abcde). Of unproven validity when used by itself, in the context of standardised psychological and physiological tests it provides data which clothes the bare bones of the personality structure and gives personal meaning to the preceding events leading up to the judicial proceedings. I t has been explained elsewhere that the psychologist offers expert testimony at three stages of the proceedings : at the stage of proving actus reus, when evidence is often largely circumstantial and all the errors of perception and memory are involved ; in proof of mens rea when clinical investigations can often furnish evidence rebutting the onus of criminal responsibility as in the case of the lady suffering from psychotic depression mentioned earlier, and, thirdly, in producing evidence in extenuation or mitigation which assists the Court in deciding the sentence. At each stage, Thematic Apperception can play an important supportive role in augmenting the psychologist's knowledge of the accused.
Rule of Hearsay The increasing use of psychological testing of accused persons referred by the Court for medical examination does bring to light one problem which exists in the presentation of psychological evidence. At present most psychiatrists embody the report of the psychologist into their own report to the Court. Generally the Court is unaware of this, although the matter is not important when the psychologist's report is purely factual and quantitative, for example, in terms of an Intelligence Quotient. Very often, however, the psychologist's report itself is an opinion based on psychometric data. The inclusion of such an opinion in the psychiatrist's report then infringes the Rules of Hearsay, for the psychiatrist is giving an opinion upon an opinion based upon facts of which the psychiatrist is not generally aware. This is unsatisfactory for both the psychologist and the psychiatrist, since the latter cannot be examined or cross-examined about facts of which he is both unaware and unqualified to interpret, while the former is in such circumstances not given the opportunity to explain and qualify his original statement made to the psychiatrist but expressly for the Court purposes. Moreover, the Court is unaware that the Law of Evidence is being flouted in this way. This is the reason why in High Court proceedings the psychologist is being called more frequently as an expert, in his own right. His evidence in no way infringes upon that of the psychiatrist but supplements it, providing quantitative information of particular value in assessing the criminal responsibility of the accused. To be valid even the Thematic Apperception analysis must first be quantified and the abnormality of the testee's response expressed in terms of statistical significance, but figures themselves take on different meanings according to the context in which they are presented. For this reason the psychologist must interpret the Apperception data to the Court ; but psychology, like all sciences, proceeds by a process of successive approximations. However reliable its data, the validity of its findings ultimately depend upon the skill and the experience of the psychologist in the interpretation of such data, and in the interests of justice the Court should be given the opportunity to assess its probity by examining 215
the psychologist in the witness box. By entering caselaw in this way, psychological evidence will find its own level of relevance and value in the scheme of things : In such a context Thematic Apperception Analysis may well achieve general recognition as one of the more useful psychometric tools of forensic science. References EYSENCK, H. J., 1961, Maudsley Personality Inventory, London : Univ. London Press. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1953, Hospitalisation Stress, Med. World, 79, 126-130. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1959, The Psychologist in a Court of Law, Bull. Brit. Psychol. SOC.,39, 1-8. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1960a, Scane v. Ainger, Bull. Brit. Psychol. Soc., 41, 26A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1960b, Practical Psychodiagnostics, Psychotherajby, 1, 11-16. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1961a, Forensic Psychology, Bull Brit. Psychol. Soc., 43, 1-5. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1961b, Psychological Evidence, J. For. Sci. Soc., 2, 8-18. HAWARD,L. R. C., 1963a, Some Psychological Aspects of Parole evidence, Brit. J . Criminol, 15, 342-360. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1963b, Reliability of Corroborated Police Evidence, J. For. Sci. SOC.,3, 71-78. HAWARD,L. R. C., 1964a, Psychological Experiments and Judicial Doubt, Bull. Brit. Psychol. Soc., 1, 5A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964b, Psychology in the Magistrates Courts, Bull. Bril. Psychol. Soc., 17, 23A (Abstract). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964c, Alguns aspectos psicologicos da prova testamentral, Revista Brasiliera da Criminol., 2, 17-35. HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964d, The Psychologists contribution to legal procedure, Modern Law Review (in press). HAWARD, L. R. C., 1964e, Psychology in Courts of Petty Session, Law Times 235, 495-513, MURRAY,H. A., 1943, Thematic Apperception Test, Harvard Univ, Press, Cambridge, Mass. PHILLIPSON, H. H., 1959, The Object Relations Technique, Tavistock, London. H., 1942, Psychodiagnostics, Hans Huber, Berne. RORSCHACH, SALFIELD,D. J., 1953, Ein Hilfsmittel Fiir die psychosomatische Diagnose Praxis, 32, 672-473. SMITH,F. V., and MADAN,S. K., 1953, A Kinaesthetic projective test, Brit. J. Psychol., 44, 156. THIGPEN, C. H.. and CLECKLEY, H. M., 1957, The Three Faces of Eve, London.