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The study published by authors Derek P. Bergeron, David H. Rosen, Randolph C. Arnau and Nathan Mascaro, Texas, USA, in their article ‘Picture interpretation and Jungian typology’ (Journal of Analytical Psychology, Feb. 2003, 48, 1, 83-99) is based on an analysis tool extrapolated from a complex method of interpreting pictures from the unconscious. This method was developed by C. G. Jung in his writings and theories. In 1977, these concepts were expanded and amplified by Jolande Jacobi in her book Vom Bilderreich der Seele, and were all further refined in Zürich by Rudolf Michel, Theodor Abt and Paul Brutsche. This method is used and taught at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich and in Jungian training institutes around the world to this day.
In 1990, Susan Bach published her book Life Paints Its Own Span ( 1990) based on the Zürich schema. In this book, she wrote about a quadrant schema. This quadrant schema is a portion extracted from the Zürich picture interpretation method referring to information, which could be found in the four corners of a drawing or painting. The authors of the study note that Bach spoke of the importance of identifying a number of other important factors to be considered in a drawing before making serious conclusions. On page 143 Bach warns of the ‘dangers of generalization and misinterpretation’.
In this article the authors state that the quadrant schema and a colour associative test are the two main tools used in their study. Probably for reasons of easier technical handling of the matter, the manifold symbolical meaning of the four quadrants has been shortened and disfigured in a completely arbitrary way. This means that the study misses the basic concepts from the very beginning. By appearing to study the question of validity of the symbolic attributes (as they are used in Jungian Picture Interpretation Method at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich), the authors are using a completely distorted version of the Method.