ABSTRACT
Projective tests are based on the assumption that people project their feelings, thoughts, and needs into their drawings, sentence completions, and descriptions of nonspecific art or specific scenes (Wandersman, 1998). Gordon (2002) suggests that if a person draws, writes about, or interprets ambiguous pictures with an unusually high degree of a particular emotion (e.g., aggression), it is likely that the person has a lot of the emotion (e.g., aggressive feelings). That a person has such emotions is, however, not equivalent to acting on such emotions or fantasies, nor does it necessarily indicate that the person has engaged in related past actions, for example, of aggression. Youths especially may have difficulty verbalizing their thoughts and feelings about issues that provoke anxiety or discomfort (Wandersman). Projective techniques like drawings, storytelling, play, and sentence completion provide indirect methods of communicating how they see themselves and their world. When youths are guarded about discussing their families and themselves, these methods may be particularly useful. Projective tests have sometimes identified symptomatic youths missed by traditional measures.
