Editing Thematic Apperception Test (section)

==History==
The TAT was developed by American [[psychologist]] Murray and lay psychoanalyst Morgan at the Harvard Clinic at [[Harvard University]] during the 1930s.  Anecdotally, the idea for the TAT emerged from a question asked by one of Murray's undergraduate students, Cecilia Roberts.<ref name="Morgan 2002 422–445">{{cite journal|last=Morgan|first=W.|title=Origin and History of the Earliest Thematic Apperception test|journal=Journal of Personality Assessment|year=2002|volume=79|issue=3|pages=422–445|doi=10.1207/s15327752jpa7903_03|pmid=12511014|s2cid=45859195}} ; see Weber's "[https://www.academia.edu/869322/_Christiana_Morgan_1897_1967_2008_ Christiana Morgan (1897–1967)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220426023008/https://www.academia.edu/869322/_Christiana_Morgan_1897_1967_2008_ |date=2022-04-26 }}," in [[Michel Weber]] and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.), ''[https://www.academia.edu/6359521/Michel_Weber_and_Will_Desmond_eds._Handbook_of_Whiteheadian_Process_Thought_2008 Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211009213445/https://www.academia.edu/6359521/Michel_Weber_and_Will_Desmond_eds._Handbook_of_Whiteheadian_Process_Thought_2008 |date=2021-10-09 }}'', Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2008, v. II, pp. 465-468.</ref> She reported that when her son was ill, he spent the day making up stories about images in magazines and she asked Murray if pictures could be employed in a clinical setting to explore the underlying dynamics of [[Personality psychology|personality]].

Murray wanted to use a measure that would reveal information about the whole person but found the contemporary tests of his time lacking in this regard. Therefore, he created the TAT. The rationale behind the technique is that people tend to interpret ambiguous situations in accordance with their own past experiences and current motivations, which may be conscious or unconscious. Murray reasoned that by asking people to tell a story about a picture, their defenses to the examiner would be lowered as they would not realize the sensitive personal information they were divulging by creating the story.<ref>Murray, H. (1973). The Analysis of Fantasy. Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company.</ref>

Murray and Morgan spent the 1930s selecting pictures from illustrative magazines and developing the test. After 3 versions of the test (Series A, Series B, and Series C), Morgan and Murray decided on the final set of pictures, Series D, which remains in use today.<ref name="Morgan 2002 422–445"/> Although she was given first authorship on the first published paper about the TAT in 1935, Morgan did not receive authorship credit on the final published instrument. Reportedly, her role in the creation of the TAT was primarily in the selection and editing of the images, but due to the primacy of the name on the original publication the majority of written inquiries about the TAT were addressed to her; since most of these letters included questions that she could not answer, she requested that her name be removed from future authorship.<ref>Anderson, J. W. (1999). Henry A. Murray and the Creation of the Thematic Apperception Test. In L. Gieser & M. I. Stein (Eds.), Evocative Images: The Thematic Apperception Test, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.</ref>

During the time Murray was developing the TAT he was also involved in [[Herman Melville]] studies. The therapeutic technique originally came to him from the "[[Moby Dick Coin|Doubloon chapter]]" in [[Moby-Dick|Moby Dick]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Vincent|first=Howard P.|title=The Trying-out of Moby-Dick|date=1980|publisher=Kent State University Press|location=Kent, Ohio|isbn=0-87338-247-1|page=Introduction}}</ref>  In this chapter, multiple characters inspect the same image (a [[Doubloon]]), but each character has vastly different interpretations of the imagery—Ahab sees symbols of himself in the coin, while the religiously devout Starbuck sees the Christian Trinity. Other characters provide interpretations of the image that give more insight into the characters themselves based on their interpretations of the imagery. Crew members, including Ahab, project their self perceptions onto the coin which was nailed to the mast. Murray, a lifelong Melvillist, often maintained that all of Melville's oeuvre was for him a TAT.

After [[World War II]], the TAT was adopted more broadly by [[Psychoanalysis|psychoanalysts]] and [[clinician]]s to evaluate emotionally disturbed [[patient]]s. Later, in the 1970s, the [[Human Potential Movement]] encouraged psychologists to use the TAT to help their clients understand themselves better and stimulate [[Personal development|personal growth]]. In the 1950s the TAT was widely used to support assessment of needs and motives.<ref>{{cite book|first=David C.|last=McClelland|chapter=Methods of Measuring Human Motivation|editor-first=John W.|editor-last=Atkinson|title=Motives in Fantasy, Action and Society|location=Princeton, N.J.|publisher=D. Van Nostrand|year=1958}}</ref>