Cross-cultural-multicultural use of the Thematic Apperception Test.

Abstract

My introduction to cross-cultural personality study began when I was a graduate student and was facilitated by Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stories and Rorschach protocols from Chinese students (Dana, 1959a). I learned from this process that in using cross-cultural interpretation of projective techniques, one could not assume that the meanings of scores and inferences were invariant and universal; they were instead culture specific and could be understood only by a n immersion in the culture. A dissatisfaction with psychiatric diagnoses of multicultural people led to my awareness that the TAT can provide information on the cultural self. This information is relevant for descriptions of cultural identity or cultural conflict and is necessary for the cultural formulations now required to increase the reliability and accuracy of a diagnosis using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [ D S M -M ; American Psychiatric Association, 1994).In all of these ventures with the TAT cards, my former teacher, Silvan Tomkins's (1947) exquisite distillation of a methodology for examining the richness of a person has remained with me to guide my interpretations in reports that can be shared with assessees and subsequently amplified by their own self-understanding.

Projective assessment of Latinos in the United States: Current realities, problems, and prospects.

“…These themes can be reported in normative emic data for different countries and for subpopulations in the United States (as inEphraim, Sochting, & Marcia, 1997). The cross-cultural and multicultural use of these approaches has been summarized elsewhere with suggested desiderata for continued development and validation of picture–story methods (Dana, in press-a). Specific scores will ultimately be required for clinical diagnoses and personality description with empirical demonstrations of their utility with Latino populations.…”