The Animal Metaphor Test

A dialogue between a chicken and a lion.

The Animal Metaphor Test was devised by Dr. Albert J Levis in 1988. Not only are the results ‘more effective than Myers-Briggs Testing’, they also promise to provide ‘personal insights in one hour!’

You begin by drawing two animals, like so:

The second step is to describe each of the animals’ superficial and internal characteristics, including their age in human years, their genders, and three of their personality traits.

You are then required to write a dialogue between the two animals, through which your deepest subconscious processes and internal conflicts are revealed.

The ultimate purpose of the test is to identify how this animal drama pertains to your life and what changes you are willing to make to reverse your particular patterns of conflict.

Although the reliability and validity of this mode of testing would seem — to me, at least — to be questionable (at best), it remains one of the more interesting mental evaluations that I have seen in my years as a psychology student.