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Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret a variety of storytelling techniques

Psychology

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Storytelling techniques are a popular projective approach for assessing many aspects of a person’s personality, such as cognitive processes, emotional function-ing, and self-regulation. The broad spectrum of techniques includes the Thematic

Apperception Test (TAT—the most widely embraced), Roberts-2, and TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story). To use these tests properly, professionals need an authoritative source of advice and guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret them. Written by Hedwig Teglasi, a leading researcher of the TAT and other storytelling techniques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition is that source.

Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health professionals, and those in training, quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of major psychological assess-ment instruments. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered.

Fully revised and updated to reflect the current research supporting storytelling tech-niques, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition reflects the latest data and theory on scoring stories and includes new material on interpreting stories in reference to a person’s abilities in cognition, emotion, relationships, motivation, and self-regulation. As well, the author provides expert assessment of the methods’ rela-tive strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on their clinical applications, and several case studies to illustrate best practices for implementing the storytelling approach to personality assessment.

HEDWIG TEGLASI, PHD, ABPP, is a Professor in the Department of Counseling and Personnel Services, University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Fellow of the APA and SPA, and has published journal articles, book chapters, and books on topics relevant to personality and temperament. Dr. Teglasi has served as an Associate Editor of the School Psychology Quarterly.

Alan S. Kaufman & Nadeen L. Kaufman, Series Editors

of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments Second Edition

Essentials

Hedwig Teglasi

Complete coverage of administration, scoring,

interpretation, and reporting

Expert advice on avoiding common pitfalls

Conveniently formatted for rapid reference

Teglasi

IncludesCD-ROM

SecondEd

itionEssentials of TA

T and Other Storytelling A

ssessments

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Essentials of TAT and Other

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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Essentialsof TAT and OtherStorytelling Assessments

Second EditionHedwig Teglasi

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:Teglasi, Hedwig. Essentials of TAT and other storytelling assessments / Hedwig Teglasi. — 2nd ed. p. ; cm. — (Essentials of psychological assessment series) Rev. ed. of: Essentials of TAT and other storytelling techniques assessment / Hedwig Teglasi. c2001. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-28192-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-470-62705-0 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-470-62717-4 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-470-62718-2 (ebk) 1. Thematic Apperception Test. 2. Personality assessment of children. I. Teglasi, Hedwig. Essentials of TAT and other storytelling techniques assessment. II. Title. III. Series: Essentials of psychological assessment series. [DNLM: 1. Thematic Apperception Test. 2. Child. 3. Personality Assessment.

WM 145.5.T3 T261ea 2010] RC473.T48T44 2010 155.4’182844—dc22

2009050969

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Series Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

One Overview 1

Two Essentials of Storytelling Administration 29

Three Essentials of Storytelling Interpretation 49

Four Essentials of TAT Assessment of Cognition 74

Five Essentials of TAT Assessment of Emotion 137

Six Essentials of TAT Assessment of Object Relations 183

Seven Essentials of TAT Assessment of Motivation and Self-Regulation 218

Eight Essentials of the Children’s Apperception Test and Other Storytelling Methods for Children 262

Nine Strengths and Weaknesses of Storytelling Assessment Techniques 300

Ten Storytelling in the Assessment Battery 316

References 348

ix

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Annotated Bibliography 376

Index 378

About the Author 386

x CONTENTS

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In the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, we have attempted to provide the reader with books that will deliver key practical information in the most effi cient and accessible style. The series features instruments in a variety of

domains, such as cognition, personality, education, and neuropsychology. For the experienced clinician, books in the series will offer a concise yet thorough way to master utilization of the continuously evolving supply of new and revised instru-ments, as well as a convenient method for keeping up to date on the tried-and-true measures. The novice will fi nd here a prioritized assembly of all the information and techniques that must be at one’s fi ngertips to begin the complicated process of individual psychological diagnosis.

Wherever feasible, visual shortcuts to highlight key points are utilized along-side systematic, step-by-step guidelines. Chapters are focused and succinct. Top-ics are targeted for an easy understanding of the essentials of administration, scoring, interpretation, and clinical application. Theory and research are continu-ally woven into the fabric of each book, but always to enhance clinical inference, never to sidetrack or overwhelm. We have long been advocates of “intelligent” testing–the notion that a profi le of test scores is meaningless unless it is brought to life by the clinical observations and astute detective work of knowledgeable examiners. Test profi les must be used to make a difference in the child’s or adult’s life, or why bother to test? We want this series to help our readers become the best intelligent testers they can be.

In Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Second Edition, Dr. Hedwig Teglasi links the projective hypothesis, which is the theoretical foundation of all thematic apperceptive techniques, with current constructs in the study of person-ality. She also contextualizes the clinical use of storytelling techniques within the study of narrative as the language of experience, refl ecting individualistic sche-mas and social information processing. Emphasizing the Thematic Apperception

Series Preface

xi

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Test (TAT), the book also covers the Children’s Apperception Test, the Tell-Me-A-Story Test, and the Roberts 2. Specifi c guidelines, including worksheets and illustrative examples, are provided in each of four areas: Cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, and motivational/self-regulatory processes.

Alan S. Kaufman, PhD, and Nadeen L. Kaufman, EdD, Series Editors

Yale University School of Medicine

xii SERIES PREFACE

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Astory, as the language of experience, may be examined and re-examined, regardless of whether it is told about a picture or recounts a personal memory. The scientifi c literature across various psychology subfi elds

provides various lenses through which to analyze open-ended narratives, both in terms of content and structure. I continue to be indebted to the scholars whose ideas inform my approach to coding and interpreting stories. This second edition has also benefi ted from listening to my students who posed insightful questions, thus spurring clarifi cations. Finally, I am appreciative of the support of my editor at Wiley, Isabel Pratt.

Acknowledgments

xiii

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1

OVERVIEW

One

Methods for eliciting and interpreting stories told about pictured scenesare known generically as thematic apperceptive techniques, traditionallyclassifi ed as projective instruments but also viewed as performance-

based measures of personality. What all projective techniques have in commonis that each presents a task that maximizes the imprint of individuality becausethere is no single correct approach to meeting the performance demands. Thebroader conceptualization of projective tests as performance-based measures of per-

sonality recognizes the essential distinction within the fi eld of personality, be-tween measures calling for the individual to navigate a task or to report infor-mation sought by a questionnaire or interview (see Meyer & Kurtz, 2006;Teglasi, 1998). Personality performance measures are distinct from the morestructured cognitive performance measures. Personality tasks are used to evalu-ate problem-solving and reasoning under conditions of uncertainty withoutan obvious correct answer, whereas cognitive tests (intelligence or academicachievement) present clear-cut problems, the answers to which are easily classi-fi ed as being correct or not. In the absence of a single right or wrong solution,evaluation of the responses to storytelling tasks occurs by qualifi ed professionalsin accord with their theoretical framework and training as well as preference fora particular interpretive scheme.

Although subjected to criticism, the set of pictures introduced by Morganand Murray (1935) as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) remains the mostpopular (Archer, Marnish, Imhof, & Piotrowski, 1991; Watkins, Campbell, &McGregor, 1988; Watkins, Campbell, Nieberding, & Hallmark, 1995). The useof these pictures, however, did not remain wedded to Murray’s interpretivesystem, and a plethora of interpretive approaches was subsequently developed.Additionally, a variety of different picture stimuli and accompanying interpretiveprocedures were introduced as variations of the TAT.

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2 ESSENTIALS OF TAT AND OTHER STORYTELLING ASSESSMENTS

HISTORY OF THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TECHNIQUES

The introduction of the TAT stimuli (Morgan & Murray, 1935; Murray, 1938,1943) popularized the idea that telling a story to pictured scenes depicting com-plex social situations would reveal important aspects of personality. The use ofpictures to elicit stories had been reported prior to the introduction of the TATbut only in four obscure studies (cited in Tomkins, 1947).

At the time that the TAT was being developed, the Rorschach technique,emphasizing perceptiongg , was gaining popularity. For Murray (1938), the TAT offeredthe advantage of assessing apperception. He defi ned perception as recognition of anobject based on sensory impression and apperception as the addition of meaning towhat is perceived. Accordingly, telling stories about pictured scenes was an apper-

ceptive task requiring the interpretation of the pictured cues to discern characters’e

motives, intentions, and expectations. Although Murray introduced a specifi c,theoretically based system for interpreting the stories told to TAT pictures, theappeal and the fl exibility of the storytelling technique led to the introduction ofmany different sets of picture stimuli and many interpretive approaches for theTAT pictures (see Chapter 8).

Interpretive procedures for the TAT and its derivatives have been designedeither for the study of personality (for a summary, see Smith, 1992) or forclinical use (for a summary, see Jenkins, 2008). Personality researchers favoredwell-defi ned criteria to assess specifi c personality constructs (see Smith, 1992),whereas clinicians preferred broader constructs to assess the functioning ofthe “whole” person. Many insisted that the TAT be interpreted and not scored(see edited volume by Gieser & Stein, 1999). Generally, clinicians preferred touse the technique as a fl exible tool for eliciting information that they wouldthen interpret in light of their professional training and expertise. Such an ap-proach is exemplifi ed by Bellak’s (1975, 1993) application of psychoanalytictheory to the interpretation of TAT stories. Despite the popularity of the TATamong clinicians, there is no consensus on a particular scoring system and thereis no comprehensive set of norms for clinical use. Nevertheless, specifi c codingprocedures have been developed for clinical purposes that are reliably scoredand correlate with adjustment (see Jenkins, 2008; McGrew & Teglasi, 1990).Although the psychoanalytic perspective dominated the clinical use of the TATfor over a half-century, other interpretive frameworks were introduced, basedprimarily in social cognitive theory (Cramer, 1996; Teglasi, 1993, 1998; Westen,Klepser, Ruffi ns, Silverman, Lifton, & Boekamp, 1991). Rather than undermin-ing its original theoretical foundations, current perspectives expand the basictenets on which the TAT was grounded.


OVERVIEW 3

According to social cognitive theory, real-time information processing isinformed by previously organized mental sets or schemas that structure knowledgeabout the self, others, and the world (Cervone, 2004; Teglasi, 1998). Individualsdraw from a storehouse of schemas to interpret current situations, and it is theinterpretation that drives decisions and actions. What is essential to understandn

about personality performance measures in clinical use is that they present tasksthat are ill-defi ned as to the desired solution, calling for individuals to impose theirmental sets to interpret and respond to ambiguous or novel stimuli.

Subsequent to the formulation of the projective hypothesis (Frank, 1939),the TAT and other measures permitting open-ended responses were designatedas projective techniques. A fundamental assumption of all projective methods,including thematic apperceptive techniques, is the “projective hypothesis,” whichposits that stimuli from the environment are perceived and organized by theindividual’s specifi c needs, motives, feelings, perceptual sets, and cognitivestructures, and that in large part this process occurs automatically and outside ofawareness (Frank, 1948). The pervasive infl uence of the unconscious on percep-tion, thought, behavior, and motivation is well documented (Bargh & Morsella,2008; Duckworth, Bargh, Garcia, & Chaiken, 2002). The projective hypothesisbears a striking resemblance to current defi nitions of the “unconscious” ascomprising qualities of the mind that infl uence conscious thought and behaviorthrough processes that are outside of immediate awareness (James, 1998; Uleman,2005). Such automatic processes shape responses to projective tests and to simi-larly unstructured life encounters.

Historically, much of the criticism directed at the TAT was rooted in theincorrect view that the TAT and self-report provide equivalent information. Sinceself-report methods were viewed as being the more straightforward and less laborintensive way to fi nd out what a person believes (just ask directly), projective testswere challenged to show that they add value beyond self-report. In this con-text, the low correlations between narrative motive measures and correspondingself-reported traits were misjudged as indicative of lack of validity of one or theother. Trait theorists tended to question the reliability and validity of projectivemeasures (e.g., Lilienfi eld, Wood, & Garb, 2000), whereas motive theorists tookthe low correlations to be evidence of the distinctiveness of the constructs as-sessed with self-report and performance instruments (e.g., Brunstein & Maier,2005).

Research has established dualities in psychological constructs that informthe use of measurement with self-report and personality performance measuressuch as the TAT. Explicit versions of constructs are attributed to the self andavailable to introspection, hence to self-report, whereas implicit versions are not



accessible by introspection (see Bornstein, 2002; James, 1998; McClelland,Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989; Westen, 1990, 1991; Winter, John, Stewart,Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998). Changes in the theoretical landscape due to advancesin understanding the profound role of the unconscious in human functioning hasled to the realization that the human mind is too complex to be characterized bya single assessment method.

DON’T FORGET

Attributes of Projective Techniques (including TAT)

• Stimuli are suffi ciently ambiguous to preclude a ready response, thereby requiring individual interpretation.

• There are many “correct” ways to approach the task.

• The response is open-ended and maximizes the imprint of organization.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The projective hypothesis and schema theory are similar in their central tenets.Both point to the role of previously organized mental “sets” in the interpreta-tion of current stimuli, and both emphasize the infl uence of these mental struc-tures as occurring outside of conscious awareness (Fiske, Haslam, & Fiske, 1991;Wyer & Srull, 1994). In essence, schema theory and research may be viewed aselaborating the workings of the projective hypothesis and as supporting perfor-mance measures of personality such as the TAT. The story form itself is a schemathat captures the organization of prior experience and provides the structurefor ordering current experience (Teglasi, 1998). To understand the operation ofschemas in guiding responses to personality performance tests, it is necessary toconsider basic dualities in psychological constructs and in modes of processinginformation.

Dualities in Psychological Constructs and Modes

of Information Processing

The well-documented distinction between implicit andt explicit versions of psy-t

chological constructs appears to correspond to a basic dichotomy betweenthe “experiencing self,” driven by emotion that imparts a sense of genuine-ness, and the “verbally defi ned self,” guided by more dispassionate processing


OVERVIEW 5

of verbal information (James, 1890). Explicitly attributed constructs expresswhat is important to one’s self-defi nition or identity or what is viewed associally desirable (being a good student) that may or may not be supportedby actual experiences (enjoying the process of learning). In a series of classicarticles, McClelland and his colleagues (Koestner & McClelland, 1990; Koestner,Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991; McClelland et al., 1989) argued that implicitachievement motivation (measured with the TAT) and explicit achievementmotivation (measured with self-report) develop by different routes and havedifferent patterns of relationships with other variables (see meta-analytic reviewin Spangler, 1992). Implicit motives are dispositional preferences for particularqualities of affective experiences, grounded in personally signifi cant encountersand spurring spontaneous reactions. In contrast, self-attributed motives areconceptualizations about the self that may be more rooted in logical, cultural,and social bases for a desired self-description than personal inclination. Self-attributed motives forecast responses to situations that provide incentives forexpressing socially promoted values or for presenting the self in a particularlight but are not necessarily linked to the individual’s affective preferences.Implicit motives develop through intrinsic enjoyment generated when doingtasks or experiencing activities or situations and, therefore, predict self-selected,goal-related activities (Biernat, 1989; Koestner, Weinberger, & McClelland, 1991;McClelland et al., 1989). The TAT-assessed implicit motives predicted long-termbehavioral trends, whereas questionnaire measures of self-attributed motivespredicted short-term choice behaviors. Dual versions of numerous constructsmeasured with self-report and performance tasks have since been proposed (seeRapid Reference 1.1).

Rapid Reference 1.1Dual Versions of Constructs: Implicit and Explicit Personality

• Achievement motivation (McClelland et al., 1989)

• Self-esteem (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000; Spalding & Hardin, 1999)

• Dependency (Bornstein, 1998)

• Anxiety (Egloff, Wilhelm, Neubauer, Mauss, & Gross, 2002)

• Attitudes (Greenwald, Banaji, Rudman, Farnham, Nosek, &Mellott, 2002)

• Aggression (Frost, Ko, & James, 2007)



Rapid Reference 1.2Dual Process Information Processing Systems (see Evans, 2008)

System One System Two

Not refl ectively conscious Conscious

Automatic, effortless Deliberative, effortful

Rapid, intuitive, simultaneousprocessing

Relatively slow, controlled, analytic processing

High capacity to process a great dealof information

Capacity limited by attention andworking memory

Experiential Rational

Implicit Explicit

Two distinct ways of knowing and of information processing (see RapidReference 1.2) are relevant to implicit and explicit versions of psychologicalconstructs. The essential contrast is between processing that is unconscious(implicit), rapid, automatic, and capable of simultaneously handling a great dealof information and processing that is conscious (explicit), slow, and deliber-ative (for a review, see Evans, 2008). This dichotomy characterizes informationprocessing that is rational and experiential, and confl ict between these modes ofthought has been described as a discrepancy between the “heart” and the “head”(see Epstein, 1994; Epstein & Pacini, 1999). The “heart” tends to harbor con-victions that do not require new evidence, deriving credibility by virtue of theirconnection to emotions. The “head” responds to logic and rational ideas that maychange more easily with new evidence. Of course, there are points in between theextremes refl ecting compromises between the two thought systems.

Individuals bring to any encounter implicit and explicit (self-attributed)motives or convictions as well as automatic and controlled modes of informationprocessing that support both implicit and self-attributed convictions. Althoughimplicit and explicit schemas are salient in different contexts, as noted earlier,they join together in their infl uences on behavior and adjustment. Under somecircumstances, external incentives may override an individual’s implicit motives(Rudman, 2004) and confl ict between explicit and implicit psychological con-structs may lead to various compromises that have implications for well-being.Discrepancy between implicit and self-attributed motives to achieve is associ-ated with decreased subjective well-being and increased symptom formation(Baumann, Kaschel, & Kuhl, 2005).


OVERVIEW 7

Discrepancies between implicit and self-attributed inclinations may be resolveddifferently depending on their social desirability in a culture (achievement oraggression). According to the channeling hypothesis (Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen,s

& Duncan, 1998), when facing a confl ict between their desires to maintain a par-ticular self-image or public reputation and their implicit inclinations, individualswill allow explicit motives to infl uence the channels for expressing the implicitmotives. For instance, a person who does not endorse an aggressive self-image,but implicitly experiences hostile tendencies, would express these tendencies inways that are indirect (Frost, Ko, & James, 2007). Assessing both versions ofpsychological constructs enables researchers and practitioners to weigh the rela-tive infl uence of explicit and implicit versions of the same personality variable asa function of the situational context.

Public and Personal Knowledge Structures

A fuller appreciation of the relationship between schema theory and the pro-jective hypothesis necessitates a distinction between two types of knowledgestructures that organize experience. One is independent of the knower, andthe other is unique to the knower (Mandler, 1982; Wozniak, 1985). Knowledgethat exists independently of the knower is public, whereas knowledge that iscc

dependent on the individual’s experiences is personal (see Fig. 1.1). All schemas,public or personal, are outgrowths of the capacity of human beings to detect,process, and use information about covariations of stimuli and events in theirsurroundings (such as a change in contingencies), often without deliberate effortor conscious awareness (Dowd & Courchaine, 2002; Lewicki, Czyzewska, & Hill,1997; Lewicki, Hill, & Czyzewska, 1992). Schemas that capture the regularitiesof the external world that are amenable to proof by logic, evidence, or socialconsensus may be called public. However, schemas that coordinate perceivedregularities in the inner and outer worlds are more aptly characterized as personal

because they are unique to the individual and subject to confi rmation only bylike-minded others.

The public schemas may be further categorized asc logical andl social. Logical sche-ll

mas such as mathematical formulas or scientifi c principles describing observedrelationships among facts or ideas (such as the formula for calculating the circum-ference of a circle) develop and change through critical analysis, logical proof,or direct evidence. Social schemas organizing regularities in routine events (howto order a meal in a restaurant, what happens when visiting the dentist), rules orbeliefs that are widely held in a culture (raising one’s hand in class, tipping theserver), or the layout of public spaces (such as an airport) are maintained by



consensus, not necessarily logic. Such social schemas provide clear expectationsabout what will happen and how to behave in commonly occurring situations(Abelson, 1981; Schank & Abelson, 1977).

A twofold classifi cation of personal schemas parallels the distinctions betweens

two versions of psychological constructs, implicit andt explicit, described abovett

(also see Payne, Burkley, & Stokes, 2008). Explicit personal schemas are modelss

about the self (in relation to others and the world), including motives that aperson endorses (self-attributes) on the basis of social values or importanceto identity but not necessarily supported by patterns of regularities in actualexperience. Explicit personal schemas are active in situations that are relativelystructured, providing cues or incentives (reminders, supervision) salient for aparticular self-image. Implicit personal schemas refl ect experiential regularities ass

an ongoing synthesis of bidirectional and reciprocal encounters of individualswith their surroundings (see Teglasi & Epstein, 1998). As individuals notice pat-terns in the external world such as links between actions and outcomes andregularities in their emotional states in relation to the stream of external events,they form expectations about what actions can or cannot bring about certaineffects. Therefore, implicit personal schemas include ideas about sources of dis-s

tress and about one’s effi cacy to regulate uncomfortable states or to bring aboutdesired outcomes, capturing the reciprocal relations among affect, cognitions,and behavior. Personal schemas, particularly if implicit, change more readilythrough experiential learning (detecting new regularities, reframing experiences)than through didactic methods (Dowd, 2006).

Schema

Public Personal

Social Logical Implicit Explicit

Figure 1.1 Public and Personal Schemas

Each individual develops unique patterns of assumptions about the self, theworld, and relationships, arriving at a particular stance toward life through thecomplex interplay of maturation, temperament, cognitive development, andsocialization (Stark, Rouse, & Livingston, 1991). Personal schemas are represen-tations that are idiosyncratic to the knower because their development is infl u-enced by individual differences shaping the transactions with the environment aswell as the interpretation of those transactions (see Teglasi, 2006). Individuals’


OVERVIEW 9

strategies for synthesizing cues provided in the scenes portrayed in TAT picturesand for organizing the response are analogous to the manner in which they applypreviously acquired knowledge for adaptive use in novel, stressful, or ambiguoussituations. Likewise, schema theory assumes that successful adaptation to unfa-miliar situations requires the coordination of what one “perceives” in the presentwith what one “knows” from previous experience.

The construct of the personal schema brings together models of perception,cognition, memory, affect, action, and feedback, in social and cultural contexts,thereby incorporating the various perspectives for understanding personality. Theschema construct also bridges the study of normal personality processes with thestudy of psychopathology because schema-driven information processing allowspreviously organized knowledge to infl uence perception of ongoing experiencesin adaptive or maladaptive ways. Knowledge structures that accurately representreality increase effi ciency in identifying perceptions, organizing them into mean-ingful units, fi lling in missing information, and devising a strategy for seekingnew information as needed. However, maladaptive schemas bias attention andinformation processing to conform to an initial misconception and resist changedespite contradictory evidence (e.g., Beck, 2002; Beck & Clark, 1997; Horowitz,1991; Riso, du Toit, Stein, & Young, 2007).

Dual theories of information processing account for the development of pub-lic and personal knowledge structures and have implications for the use of toolsto assess the schemas that represent these two modes of thought.

DON’T FORGET

Projective techniques are concerned primarily with the application of knowl-edge structures that are unique to the knower to organize responses toambiguous stimuli.

THE SCHEMA AND THE STORY

The story form and personal schemasare similar in that both are productsof prior synthesis of experience andinform subsequent information pro-cessing. The story implicitly carriesthe schemas by which individuals

C A U T I O N

Personal schemas are resistant tochange because the processes that led to their development may still be op-erating and because schemas tend to organize and modify new experiencesto fi t the preexisting structures.



order their experiences, structuring the stream of life events as episodes witha beginning, middle, and end (Oatley, 1992). Far more than delineating eventsthat occur at a particular time and place, the story conveys personal meanings byweaving together events, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in ways that refl ectcausal, conditional, and temporal understandings (that even preschool childrenpossess; see review, Flavell & Miller, 1998; Fivush & Haden, 1997; Wellman &Gelman, 1998). In essence, the story functions as a tool for thinking (Bruner,1990; Hermans, 2003), incorporating the narrator’s understanding of the mentalworld, termed “theory of mind,” based on the recognition that outward actionsare organized by the inner world of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, wishes, and inten-tions (Fonagy & Target, 2003).

Children’s understanding of mental states develops in tandem with theircapacity to incorporate psychological causality in recounting autobiographicalmemories. Narrative accounts of experience refl ect understandings of mentalstates as causally related to behaviors (see review, Reese, 2002). Akin to the schema,theory of mind is not a collection of isolated beliefs but captures the reciprocalrelations among mental states, perceptions of environments, decisions, plans,and actions (Wellman, 1990). As do schemas, theory of mind operates outsideof consciousness and provides a foundation for processing social information,including classifi cations and relations among mental elements (thoughts, feelings,intentions) and their connections to external events and actions.

Narrative as Cognition

The contrast between narrative and propositional thought parallels the distinc-tion between public and personal schemas. Propositional thought is public,logical, formal, theoretical, general, and abstract, whereas narrative thought isstory-like, concrete, specifi c, personally convincing, imagistic, interpersonal,and includes characters, settings, intentions, emotions, actions, and outcomes(see Bruner 1986, 1990). Narrative and propositional modes of thought pro-vide distinct ways of ordering experience. Propositional or paradigmatic thoughtemploys operations by which one establishes categorization or conceptualiza-tions (Bruner, 1986; Hermans, Kempen, & Van Loon, 1992; Vitz, 1990) andencompasses logical or scientifi c universals that transcend personal experi-ence and specifi c context. Narrative thought also establishes categories, butthey are contextualized in relation to specifi c persons, times, and places andinvested with emotion. Logical thought aims to establish truth, whereas the nar-rative mode convinces by its meaningfulness (Parry & Doan, 1994). (See RapidReference 1.3.)


OVERVIEW 11

Rapid Reference 1.3Empirical and Conceptual Support for the Assessment of

Schemas with Storytelling

1. A growing body of literature urges researchers to focus on stories as thenatural mode through which individuals make sense of their experiences (e.g., Bruner, 1990; McAdams, Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfi eld, 1997). The ability to construct stories with a sensible sequence of events, reasonable causal relationships, and cohesive emotional experiences is an important developmental task of childhood, with implications for mental health (Mancuso & Sarbin, 1998). Storytelling is closely linked to listening and to reading comprehension (Blankman, Teglasi, & Lawser, 2002).

2. The principles that organize experience are evident through various narrativeprocedures including early memories, autobiographical recollections, and stories told to picture stimuli (Demorest & Alexander, 1992; McAdams,Hoffman, Mansfi eld, & Day, 1996). Thematic coherence (agency andcommunion) was evident across narratives written by adults and college stu-dents about personally important scenes in their lives and their TAT stories (McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfi eld, & Day, 1996). Scripts extracted from autobiographical memories and from stories told to TAT cards a month later supported the conclusion that scripted knowledge structures are superim-posed on new affective stimuli (Demorest and Alexander, 1992).

3. Socially competent behavior involves complex skills starting with accurate encoding and interpretation of relevant cues from external and internal sources, formulating intentions, maintaining goals, generating appropriate responses, and using strategies to enact and evaluate the chosen response(Dodge & Price, 1994; Elias & Tobias, 1996). Although these components of social problem solving may be conceptually separated, they are linked to-gether in the story form as a framework for thinking about social situations(e.g., Teglasi & Rothman, 2001; Teglasi, Rahill, & Rothman, 2007).

4. Schemas that represent relationships maladaptively are functionally related to psychopathology (e.g., Downey, Lebolt, Rincon, & Freitas, 1998; Oppenheim,Emde, & Warren, 1997). Schematic processing problems that reduce fl exibility in processing information promote vicious cycles where ineffective schemas are preserved, thereby maintaining dysfunctional emotions, attitudes, and behaviors (Greenberg, Rice, & Elliott, 1993). Cognitive therapeutic approaches are increasingly grounded in schema theory (e.g., Riso, du Toit et al., 2007).

5. Stories are important structures that organize experiences. Mental andphysical benefi ts derive from expressing feelings associated with adverse events in an organized way, such as telling a story (Hemenover, 2003; Pennebaker, 1997). However, the experience need not be one’s own.Writing about someone else’s trauma as if it were one’s own produced effects that were similar to writing about one’s own traumatic experience(Greenberg, Wortman, & Stone, 1996).



The ability to organize experience into narrative form is a central developmentaltask, related to children’s adjustment (Mancuso & Sarbin, 1998). At about 5 years ofage, children’s narratives move beyond temporal sequences of events to identify theproblem or psychological issue in a situation, and by ages 9 to 11, approximate adultlevels (Applebee, 1978; Botvin & Sutton-Smith, 1977; Peterson & McCabe, 1983).Children who do not provide cohesive narrative accounts of events or experiencesare perceived as less competent academically and socially (Bloome, Katz, & Cham-pion, 2003). Exchanging stories is a fundamental mode by which people share theirsubjective reality, and telling the right story at the right time in a social conversationhas been viewed as a hallmark of social intelligence (Schank, 1990). As the languageof experience, it has been argued that virtually all meaningful social knowledge islearned in the form of stories (Schank & Abelson, 1995).

TAT and Autobiographical Narrative

The story is the primary means by which episodes in daily life are representedin memory (Schank, 1990), providing a structure for ordering the sequences ofevents, situating them in a particular place and point in time, and connecting themto feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. According to script theory, the scene or recol-e

lection of a specifi c episode in one’s life contains at least one basic affect (e.g., joy,excitement, fear, anger) and one object of that affect (Tomkins, 1987; Carlson,1981). Scenes become organized into families or groupings, comprising scripts

that govern the interpretation, creation, and organization of new scenes and rec-ollections of prior scenes. Tomkins’ notion of script corresponds to the personal

schema. The ability to recall scenes (episodic memory) and to organize them intoscripts (general event memory) serves adaptive functions (see review, Nelson &Fivush, 2004). Giving a coherent account of a specifi c experience is necessary forcommunication, whereas the synthesis of events into general narrative structures(scripts or schemas) aids the recall of prior episodes (fi lling in the gaps) and in-forms interpretations of subsequent ones.

Recalled episodes are not expected to correspond with what actuallyhappened. Rather, the greatest value in autobiographical studies lies in their illumi-nation of current life meanings (Tomkins, 1987). Likewise, experiences describedby clients to their therapists do not correspond to historical facts but constitute“story lines” that have been transformed by psychological processes (Schafer,1992). Similarly, according to the life-story model of adult identity (McAdams,1985, 1993; McAdams & Pals, 2006), individuals selectively value past experiencesthat are continuous with the present, thereby lending coherence to their lives.Memories that are relevant for individuals’ implicit and explicit goals or motives


OVERVIEW 13

are more accessible (Woike, Mcleod, & Goggin, 2003). Implicit motives operate inthe recall of emotionally charged experiences (Woike, Gershkovich, Piorkowski,& Polo, 1999), whereas explicit motives operate in the recall of experiences andinformation relevant to maintaining the self-concept (DeSteno & Salovey, 1997;Singer & Salovey, 1993; Woike et al., 2003).

The details of stories told to TAT stimuli are not assumed to representactual experiences. However, like other sources of narrative (the interview,autobiographic stories, specifi c recollections, diaries), TAT stories are amenableto analysis in terms of the categories and principles that organize experience suchas causal understandings, means-ends sets, abstract themes, affective scripts, andcomplexity in the representation of persons (e.g., Alexander, 1988; Arnold, 1962;Demorest & Alexander, 1992; Leigh, Westen, Barends, Mendel, & Byers, 1992;McAdams, Hoffman, Mansfi eld, & Day, 1996; Schank, 1990). Early memorynarratives of patients at the start of therapy and TAT stories were coded with theSocial Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS; Westen, 1995) and both predictedthe therapeutic alliance, a variable crucial to outcomes (see Pinsker-Aspen, Stein,& Hilsenroth, 2007). Broad motivational themes (agency and communion) codedfrom TAT stories are congruent with thematic content of diaries of daily memo-ries (Woike & Polo, 2001). Through unconscious processes, individuals apply thecategories for thinking about signifi cant others to new encounters (Andersen,Reznik, & Glassman, 2005), and these categories may be gleaned from analysis ofstories about early experiences and about TAT cards.

The categories built into schemas depend on individuality in detecting patternsof regularities across experiences. The raw materials for detecting patterns arethe observed distinctions. As individuals interact with their social and physicalworlds, they construe reality (expectations, causal understandings) by registeringpatterns in what they notice as relevant in their surroundings. When co-occurringthoughts, emotions, and action tendencies are noticed in a given environmentalcontext, the brain clusters them together (see Mischel & Ayduk, 2004) such that,when one element of the cluster is brought to mind, it activates the others (a visitto one’s childhood home calling forth certain feelings and thoughts).

An examination of neural networks involved in autobiographical memory (us-ing event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) demonstrated that TATstimuli activated brain areas known to be involved in autobiographical memory re-trieval (Schnell, Dietrich, Schnitker, Daumann, & Herpertz, 2007). The TAT cardsproduced similar activation in those with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)and control participants but, unlike the control participants, those with BPDshowed hyperactivation of these areas for both the affectively loaded TAT andfor neutral stimuli. This fi nding that those with BPD did not differentiate between



emotional and neutral stimuli means that such distinctions are not available in dailylife to enrich the implicit process of schema development. What is not noticed,even implicitly, cannot be classifi ed into categories that are built into the schemas.

When the individual is actively contemplating an interpersonal situation ortask, such as telling stories about pictorial stimuli, he or she constructs a workingmodel that combines internal and external sources of information (see RapidReference 1.4). Stories evoked by pictures permit the evaluation of the categ-ories applied to information processing that contribute to well-being as well asto distress or counterproductive behavior. Structural features of children’s TATstories reveal distortions and defi cits in processing information that are associ-ated with emotional disability identifi ed in the school system (Lohr, Teglasi, &French, 2004; McGrew & Teglasi, 1990). Qualities of children’s schemas such astheir accuracy, organization, and complexity have been related to temperament(Bassan-Diamond, Teglasi, & Schmidt, 1995; Lohr et al., 2004), empathy (Locraft& Teglasi, 1997; Teglasi, Locraft, & Felgenhauer, 2008a), as well as to listening andreading comprehension (Blankman, Teglasi, & Lawser, 2002).

Rapid Reference 1.4The Relationship of TAT Stories to Life Experiences

1. Individuals learn “lessons” from the regularities of day-to-day experiences. When a lesson repeatedly occurs, it may become a type of structure (likegrammar) that exists apart from the specifi c incidents from which the lesson arose (Schank, 1990; Tomkins, 1987). Because abstracted schemas are based on numerous experiences (real or vicarious), they are readily activated (Mur-ray, 1938), particularly in ambiguous situations or by tasks such as the TAT.

2. Individual differences in the synthesis of experiences applied to daily life areparalleled by variations in the construction of TAT stories as (a) piecemealassociations, (b) a direct replay of actual experiences selected from memory, (c) imposition of narrative patterns borrowed from books, other media, or stereotypes, or (d) application of convictions or lessons “abstracted” from experience (Teglasi, 1993) to meet task demands.

3. The inner logic and cohesiveness of the stories together with their content represent how individuals learn from day-to-day experiences and how they apply their knowledge to meet the task demand (e.g., accurately interpreting the stimuli and following instructions).

4. Content that is repeated provides clues about the narrator’s concerns or preoccupations (Henry, 1956). However, addressing both the structure andcontent overcomes the pitfall of attributing too much weight to content (thatmay be pulled by the stimuli or recent experiences) but not meaningfully incor-porated into structures that guide the synthesis of experience (Teglasi, 1998).


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