ABSTRACT
The scoring scheme began as a direct translation of Sigmund Freud’s writings about primary process thinking into a method of identifying it in Rorschach responses, later adapted for the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and expanded into measuring adaptive versus maladaptive regression in thought–products. Though conceived as a way of operationalizing Freud’s conceptualization of the disordered cognitive-affective processes generating dreams, pathological and creative thinking, the scored variables—especially the forms of controlling and defending against drive-laden and deviant thinking to make it adaptive—have turned out to be more broadly useful measures of key aspects of personality.
