128 • Introduction to Art Therapy
use of finger painting, inspired by the work of Ruth Shaw (1938), was later used and ampli-
fied by others, like my college psychology professor Thelma Alper, whose excitement about
a study relating finger paintings to socioeconomic level was contagious. Similarly, the Easel
Age Scale was designed by psychologist Beatrice Lantz (1955) to study the growth and adjust-
ment of normal young children through their spontaneous paintings.
Other well-designed investigations by developmental psychologists of relevance to art thera-
pists were done by Cox (1992, 1997), Gardner (1980), Goodnow (1977), and Thomas and Silk
(1990). Some of the research they report seems to validate at least some common projective
hypotheses, like the symbolic significance of size or color. Their skeptical observations on the
diagnostic use of art, however, are useful reminders of the nebulous state of this field of study.
While correlations between artwork and personality remain doubtful, drawing assess-
ment of development levels has been shown to have somewhat greater validity. In 1963, Dale
Harris revised and extended Goodenough’s Draw-a-Man Test as a measure of “intellectual
maturity” in children. In 1968, Elizabeth Koppitz refined procedures for the use of Human
Figure Drawings (HFDs) by elementary school children to measure developmental level, as
well as to assess adjustment via “emotional indicators” (cf. also Koppitz, 1984).
Art Therapists as Diagnosticians
Art Therapists and Projective Drawings
When art therapists seeing children were informally surveyed by the American Art Therapy
Association (AATA) in 1991, it was found that they were almost as familiar with the DAP,
H-T-P, and KFD as they were with the art therapy techniques on the list. Indeed, because
of waning interest in projective drawings, Klepsch and Logie (1982) concluded “that peo-
ple other than psychologists, professionals who work with children, should be prepared to
acquaint themselves with what drawings have to say.” It would appear that many art thera-
pists have done just that.
Cay Drachnik’s 1995 manual on the interpretation of children’s drawings includes
descriptions of the most common projective drawing tests, along with many traditional
assumptions of the meaning of various aspects of both form and content. Stephanie Brooke’s
2004 revision of her 1996 Guide to Art Therapy Assessment reflects art therapists’ continued
interest in the drawing tasks developed by clinical psychologists (6 chapters), while includ-
ing more procedures devised by art therapists (10) than the first edition.
Like many art therapists, I have sometimes suggested themes used in projective drawing
tasks for the simple reason that they are central to understanding individuals’ perceptions
of self and others—like the “Person” and “Self-Portrait” done by Jimmy in the following
vignette. I was supervising a student who wanted to do an informal research study in the set-
ting where I had just started an art program. Comparing self and person drawings seemed
like a good and potentially revealing set of tasks, given the subjects.
Draw-a-Person and Self-Portrait in Assessment: JIMMY (5)
Jimmy was a five-year-old boy who was a residential student at the Home for Crippled
Children in 1967 (DVD 6.7). He was first asked to “draw a person,” and proceeded to pro-
duce a picture of a clown (A). This drawing was in fact rather advanced for his chronological
age level, apparent immediately (Fi g u re 6. 6) without needing to score it on the Goodenough-
Harris Scale (Harris, 1963).
He was then asked to make a self-portrait, and on the other side of the same paper he
drew a human figure typical not of a five-year-old, but rather of a two- or three-year-old at a