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This is an excellent introduction to Murray's Thematic Apperception Test in German. It is well written, well organized, and systematic. It describes the test, its administration and interpretation. It is based mainly on the work of Murray and Tomkins but contains
the author's own contributions. These consist of a description of the ways in which sexual conflicts are revealed in the TAT and of the specific TAT reactions of some (by no means all) schizophrenics, paranoids, obsessives, depressives, and delinquents. The book which covers the subject conscientiously omits no essential methodological point. The frequencies with which specific themes occur in various groups of subjects are not indicated, but there are not many such statistics available. The author used the TAT as an aid in psychotherapy to obtain, at the beginning of treatment, clues regarding the conscious and unconscious problems of the patients. This procedure no doubt helped the author to clarify the issues, to separate the essential from the non-essential, to deepen the understanding of the test, and to enliven the style and mode of presentation.
Much attention is paid to the relation between the TAT and the overt conduct of the patient. This leads to a discussion of the “hero” concept, or of the mechanism of identification with one or several figures in the TAT pictures. The author points out that at times the identification with a person of the opposite sex is facilitated by the absence (in a particular picture) of a figure of the patient's sex. The example on p. 84/6 is a particularly good one to illustrate the principle that patients ascribe to the other-sex TAT figures frequently (and probably regularly) those of their tendencies which they find partially unacceptable and which produce anxiety in them. Thanks to the unity of conception and maturity of judgment, combined with great experience, the author produced a book which will aid greatly those interested in acquainting themselves with one of