The document provides a comprehensive analysis framework for the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), emphasizing the interpretation of stories generated by test subjects. It outlines various variables including story-description, stimulus perception, and personal relationships, alongside the emotional tones and qualities of telling that influence narrative content. The guidance serves as a tool for clinicians to discern patterns and themes in responses, contributing to a deeper understanding of a testee's psychological state.

1. Decoding TAT -14
Analyzing the TAT
Compiled by Col Mukteshwar Prasad(Retd),
Mtech(IITD),CE(I),FIE(I),FIETE,FISLE,FInstOD,AMCSI
Contact -9007224278, e-mail –muktesh_prasad@yahoo.co.in
for book ”Decoding Services Selection Board” and SSB ON line guidance and training
at Shivnandani Edu and Defence Academy

2. Introduction
• There are no formal, normative standards for the TAT.
• The simplest procedure for studying TAT responses is the inspection
technique.
• Most clinicians interpret the TAT stories informally; repetitive
patterns or themes become apparent by reading through a subject's
stories.
• The following are the types of variables that that analyzer
should look for in scoring and analyzing a testee's test.

3. Interpretation
• Story-Description
• Paying attention to how the testee uses story or description.
• Are there transitions in there explanations or is there a tendency for more clear-cut
conditions.
• Stimulus Perception
• How much the stimulus in the picture was defined and perceived.
• The stimuli may be perceived by the testee in a way that is common, when it is not it is
considered a deviation.
• Deviation from the Typical Response
• The testee may perceive what is considered normal responses to stimuli story plots
in unusual ways.
• Deviation from Self
• When the testee deviates from their normal perception of the stimuli.
• This variable should be checked after all the other stories have been analyzed.
• Time Trend
• This serves to indicate the trend of the response as far as time is concerned whether it
gravitates toward the past: rest mainly in the present or projects into the future.

4. Interpretation
• Level of Interpretation
• The following qualities are the most common in occurrence and most significant for
interpretation.
• Concrete-factual: realistic experiences
• Endo-psychic: waking inner experiences
• Symbolic: the scene means something beyond its immediate appearance
• Dreamlike: Imagined subjective reality, as in dream, in trance, in hallucination
• Past and Mythical: Response dealing with more remote, "historical" past, no less than a
generation ago, or any realm of Gods or ghosts
• Make-believe: People in the story pretend to do, or feel, something which they do not
really feel, or do.
• Conditional: The progress of events is made dependent on a certain interpretation in
the beginning

5. Interpretation
• Tone of Story
• This refers to the feeling tone which pervades the entire response and is hence
the complex effect of language and imagery, of story, and even of the perception
of the stimulus.
• Indifferent: no particular tone
• Detached: noticeable attention to be aloof
• Contemplative: philosophical, meditative, didactic
• Cheerful-expansive: buoyant, vigorous drive
• Serene: content but quiet, without much display of drive
• Melodramatic-pompous: stereotypes of language or plot
• Unhappy-tragic: any unhappy feeling tone other than the ones specified subsequently;
frustration, suffering, thwarting, etc.
• Tense: unresolved tension throughout the response, constrained
• Anxious: expression of anxiety
• Morbid: any tone of extreme moroseness; disintegration, abandonment of self, gore, loss of
orientation and control
• Aggressive: with the connotation of pent-up hatred, vindictive lashing-out, critical asides

6. Interpretation
• Quality of Telling
• Choice of language, or diction, and to the style of telling, ranging from the structure of sentences to
composition.
• Simple: every-day language
• Primitive: limited vocabulary, typical grammar mistakes and syntax
• Verbose:profuse on a simple or primitive level
• Stilted: extravagant formality, stiffness, high-fallutin' words and phrases
• Cliche: Stereotype phrases of cheap literature
• Colorful: variety, originality of expression on a simple, not particularly literate level
• Literate: diction and style showing influence of literacy and esthetic training
• Critical:If a good deal of emphasis is on a critical discussion of either the stimulus or the presumed
conduct of the people in it
• Evasive: the response is obviously to disguise the testee's true attitudes
• Focal Figure
• The figure, the former "hero," should not be selected according to his/her virtues but with regard to
the extent to which the response centers around him/her.
• Descriptions of sex and the most important traits or activities which characterize this figure for a
particular story, in the testee's own words.
• Other Figures
• Figures other than the focal one should be described in exactly the same way.

7. Interpretation
• Personal Relationships
• Two classes of relationships should be distinguished.
• Formal: institutional relationships (father, mother, husband, wife etc.).
• Emotional: relationships of love, hatred, dependence, etc.
• Strivings/AvoidancesManifest tendencies prior to any designation
of unconscious significance. The tendency away from something.
• Presses
• Influence from outside exercised upon focal figure, his/her counterpart, or upon any
next-to-focal figure.
• Outcome
• Success or defeat in the end refer to the focal figure. Both should be understood in a
wide sense, like gratification and frustration. Unresolved tension denotes the absence
of an outcome, as when the situation is left dangling.
• Thema
• The main trend and main events of the story should be abstracted here in the most
concise form.