ABSTRACT
The Need-Threat Analysis (NTA) is a system for use with the Children’s Apperception Test (CAT) used to identify the needs and threats that are most meaningful to the child. With the NTA, needs and threats are viewed as polarities, with motives composed of some proportion of each. Selected needs and threats commonly found in children’s lives were paired to form a set of five need-threat combinations or binaries: independence– domination, affiliation–rejection, security–insecurity, achievement–failure, and aggression– punishment. When used as scoring categories a sixth category, other, is added.
