Children's Drawings of the Human Figure by Maureen V. Cox

Author:Maureen V. Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Psychology Press

The Machover Draw-a-Person Test

Machover’s (1949) Draw-a-Person test has been considered to be a very useful way of assessing personality, being based on the assumptions that “the drawing of a person represents the expression of self, or the body, in the environment” (Machover, 1951, p. 348) and “the composite image that constitutes the figure drawn is intimately tied to the self in all of its ramifications” (p. 349). Distortions of the figure are deemed to be symbolic representations of inadequacies or distortions of the drawer’s self-image, an argument also put forward or at least endorsed by several other researchers (e.g. Berman & Laffal, 1953; Buck, 1948; Schildkrout, Shenker, & Sonnenblick, 1972). First the child is asked to “draw a person” or to “draw somebody”; this figure is interpreted as an expression of self and sex-role identification. The child is then asked to draw a second figure on another sheet of paper; if the first figure was a male, then the examiner asks for a female figure, and vice versa. The second figure is interpreted as revealing something about the child’s relationship to other important people in her life. Machover’s interpretation of the drawings takes into account the particular body parts included, their size and shape, their position on the page, the quality of the line, the amount of erasure, and so on. The interpretation is heavily influenced by a psychoanalytic orientation, imbuing almost every line and segment of the drawing with symbolic meaning and taking no account of the way that perfectly normal young children draw.

Figure 5.1 shows a picture drawn by 8-year-old Peter, which Machover (1951) has used as an example to illustrate her method of personality analysis through the drawing of the human figure. Peter came from a middle-class family and he himself was of superior intelligence, was socially polite and had cultivated, adult manners. His father, a physician, had been overseas for 3 years and his mother had been distraught, unstable and restless during this time. She vacillated in her management of Peter, alternating between indulgence and harsh discipline. Peter had become increasingly aggressive, restless and attention-seeking by telling bawdy stories, swearing and handling his genitals.

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