A New Figure Drawing Technique for Diagnosis and Evaluation

Considerable clinical experience and numerous studies over the past fifteen years have established the diagnostic value of the auxiliary use of human figure drawings. A modified technique of the drawing test I shall describe renders it more intensive on a deep analytical level and particularly suited for therapeutic and evaluative purposes.

In the usual administration of the test the patient is asked to draw the entire figure of a person on one sheet of paper and then a person of the opposite sex on a second sheet of paper. The modified technique I have used consists of asking the subject to draw the entire figures of a nude couple on one sheet of paper. The short time required to administer this test and its non-verbal mode of inquiry make it particularly suitable for the analyst to administer before the beginning and upon termination of treatment. The patient may be reassured by informing him that the drawing is for routine research purposes and that drawing skill is of no relevance.

The advantage of this variation lies in its potential for obtaining a depth of interpersonal inquiry which reaches the most intimate aspects of the patient's psyche in terms of his attitudes to the opposite sex and in his self concept with regard to feelings of adequacy in the sexual role. In clinical diagnostic testing over the years, I have found that the deeper psychopathology of certain borderline and paranoid cases revealed itself only in nude drawings; their regular figure drawings showed no such severe disturbance, or only hints in that direction. But faced with the added challenge of nudity, their defenses weakened and the resultant nude drawings were quite disorganized and even bizarre.