The Psychoanalytic and Psychiatric Significance of Phantasy: Jules H. Masserman and Eva R. Balken. Psa. Rev., XXVI, 1939, p. 535.

There is an increasing interest in psychological tests as supplements to clinical psychoanalytic study. It is hoped that tests can be developed which will bring certain trends into sharper focus, be short cuts to salient features of a case, and so on. This paper is the second part of a report of a study designed to develop a utilization of the Morgan-Murray picture test as a clinical psychiatric aid in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Fifty patients were asked to write stories about each of a series of twenty pictures, thereby providing these fantasies for psychoanalytic interpretation by the authors. The fantasies were found to reflect characteristics of the patient's emotional state and conflicts. For example, the obsessional patients produced stories in which doubt was prominent, depressives wove in guilt and suicide, and so on. The fantasies sometimes revealed clearly trends not observed in interview, as was the case with the suicidal tendencies of one patient. They can therefore be of diagnostic value. The changes in the fantasies, and the hopes or fears they express are useful prognostically and as an index of insight and therapeutic progress. The authors suggest certain improvements in the tests and further lines of work, such as statistical studies of the responses and physiological studies at the time of the test. The work is an interesting exploration of the value of this type of test.