Medical Dictionary Online

Thematic Apperception Test

A projective technique which focuses primarily on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. It consists of a series of 31 pictures that depict various social situations and interpersonal relations. A subset is selected by the examiner and presented to the subject who is asked to tell a story about each picture. The stories are interpreted in terms of the subject's relations to authority figures, to contemporaries of both sexes, and in terms of the compromises between external demands and the needs of the id, the ego, and the superego. (From Campbell, Psychiatric Dictionary, 1996)