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The Thematic Apperception Test, introduced by Morgan and Murray in 1935 (3), consists of pictures of one or several persons, of both sexes and different ages. The pictures are shown one at a time with the request that the subject make up a story about each picture, telling what has led up to the event portrayed, what is happening at the moment, what the characters are feeling and thinking, and what the outcome will be; “you can make up any kind of story” (4). Murray and others found that not all of the subject's traits are reflected in his stories, and that frequently the personality traits of the characters including those of the “heroes” of the stories do not coincide with the observable personality traits of the subject who has told the stories. Could it be that these traits, unconfirmed by observation of overt behavior, are not related to the subject's personality? Are they perhaps pure imagination, or traits unacceptable to the subject and thus not manifested by him overtly because they produce anxiety or are repressed? It seems improbable that a creative act, even of a modest degree, does not express some personality traits of the creator. If the TAT discloses traits, some of which are and some of which are not observable in overt behavior, it is desirable to have a way of separating the two groups of traits.
In an experiment published by Shneidman in 1951 (6), seventeen psychologists interpreted the TAT of a young adult male schizophrenic ‘blind.’ Commenting on the results, Murray concluded (6, foreword): “Those who laughed at probabilities and stretched inference to the limit succeeded in seizing the fruits of truth, which in this case was in the topmost branches of the protocols. In contrast, those who were more obedient, say, to their scientific superegos were uncriticizably less triumphant.” Those who followed a systematic