Personality drawing tests: Do they Hold Up?
When I was about ten years old a psychologist asked me to draw a sun, a house, a river, a tree and a snake. I remember being puzzled as to why this very official looking lady who had been asking me questions for the last hour or so suddenly wanted me to draw a picture…and why so specific? I remember starting to draw, trying to remember what I was supposed to include. I drew a house with purple shutters, because I liked purple. I drew my sun in the corner of the page, the way I always did, and I put the snake on the far side of the page hanging on the tree because I thought snakes were icky. It wasn’t my best work, but it was an innocent, unimportant 10-year old’s drawing.
Being a psychology student now, I realize that what she did was administer a personality drawing test, and there was nothing unimportant about the layout of my drawing. Thinking about the way I felt then and being capable of more introspection now in my adult age, I begin to wonder about the validity of this test.
A brief internet search tells me that the house would have represented myself. The psychologist I had gone to see told my parents that as represented by the shutters, I was a very closed off child. From my ten year old perspective however, I probably drew shutters on my pictures because my house had them, and that is what a house was supposed to look like to me. The tree represents my mother, and the sun represents my father. I don’t remember exactly what the psychologist said about this, but based on my drawing she would have said that because the sun was in the corner, I was not close to my father, and because the snake was hanging in the tree, I saw problems with or surrounding my mother. The river was supposed to be my friends. Because I drew it fairly in the center of the page, she might have said that my friends are a central force in my life. From this one drawing, the psychologist was able to draw conclusions on vital aspects of my personality and my most important relationships.
But I was just drawing like I always did! I was a child letting my imagination go drawing whichever way made my picture look the prettiest. Was there something in my subconscious trying to communicate with the outside world through the medium of wax crayons? Was the psychologist going to uncover some Freudian desire based on the location of the sun with the smiley face on it? Looking back on it now, all of this seems very subjective. Psychologists are making very serious assumptions from benign drawings. Is there really any science behind this? Honestly, I don’t know. Right not I’m doubtful but more intensive research and perhaps my own experience administrating it in a clinical setting might provide me with a clearer answer.
