Explain the classification of projective techniques. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of projective techniques.

 Classification of Projective Techniques

The classification of projective techniques has been recently provided by Lindzay (1959). Based upon the responses of the examinees, he has divided projective techniques into the following five categories, iz., (i) Association technique (ii) Construction technique (iii) Completion technique (iv) Expressive technique (v) Choice technique. These are being explained below.

Association Technique

This category includes all those situations where the examinee is required to respond with the associations which are evoked in mind after seeing or listening to stimulus materials. E.g., the Rorschach test, the Holtzman Inkblot test and the Word Association test. The reaction time (the time elapsing between the presentation of the stimulus word and the response word) and the responses are analysed for studying personality.

Construction Technique

This category includes all those situations where the examinees are required to construct a story after seeing the stimulus materials (usually the picture) within certain specified time. No record is generally kept of time but the examinee’s themes and mode of responding are considered relevant. For example, Thematic Apperception test, Children’s Apperception test. Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test. The Blacky Pictures, The Object Relations test, etc. In all these tests the examinee is required to construct or produce simple statement or complex statements in the form of a story.

Completion Technique

These techniques include those situations where the examinee is presented with some incomplete sentences with the construction to complete them in any way he desires.

Expressive Technique

This technique includes those situations where the examinee expresses his personality through some manipulative tasks, which usually involve some interaction with given materials. For example, play, drawing role- playing painting finger painting, etc. An important feature is that examiner pays much attention to the way or process by which the examinee manipulates the given materials. For example, the examiner may ask the examinee to play with a given set of dolls; he may pay attention to the process by which dolls are selected and handled during the play.

Also, in such techniques, significance is given to the process or way of handling the test materials rather than upon the end product of the process (such as the content or theme of the stories, etc.).

Choice Technique

Choice technique, also known as ordering technique, is not a projective in its true sense; rather may be regarded as a step towards objectifying the projective techniques (Kerlinger, 1973). The examinee is presented with some sets of pictures or items (which convey the different degrees of a trait) with the instruction to choose the most relevant and appropriate picture. Sometimes, he may be asked to order or rank those pictures in terms of his preferences, and thus, the name ordering technique. The choice of the items, becomes the basis for inference regarding one’s personality. The Szondi test is an example of ordering technique because the examinees are required to rank set of pictures along a like-dislike dimension.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Projective Techniques

There are two unique strengths of projective tests. First, the testing stimuli are relatively ambiguous to people. As such, the person does not know how the test provides information to the examiner. This indirect method helps in disguising the real purpose of the test and it reduces the possibility that people will engage in intentional deception. Second, the indirect method used in projective tests allows circumventing conscious defenses, thus making them sensitive to aspects of personality that are hidden.

However some of the disadvantages include that projective tests are poorly standardised, in large part because there are no established methods of administration, scoring, and interpretation. In particular, the scoring of these tests often relies on the skill and clinical intuition of the examiner, thus making their reliability quite low.

Evidence suggests that extensive training in a specific scoring system leads to satisfactory levels of inter judge agreement( Goldfried, et al., 1971;Exner, 1986). A more serious problem concerns the interpretation of a person’s scored responses to a projective test. Interpretation of such tests depends all too often on the personal insights and intuition of the clinician. There is also little convincing evidence to support the validity of projective tests (Aiken, 1984; Peterson, 1978). Therefore, psychologists are well advised not to base an entire diagnosis solely on projective tests. Projective tests should be considered in the context of other information obtained through interviews, case histories, and self- report tests.

Despite the aforesaid problems, many clinical psychologists continue to apply these methods as a means to explore a person’s unconscious conflicts, fantasies and motives(Singer & Kolligian, 1987). They are more capable of revealing human personality in greater depth and detail than some of the personality inventories where considerable faking is possible. People have more faith in interpreting projective tests than personality inventories. A survey of the member of the Society for Personality Assessment found that Rorschach and TAT were ranked as second and fourth, respectively, in terms of usage among all psychometric instruments.

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