Storytelling, Narrative, and the Thematic Apperception Test

Phebe Cramer, PhD, until her death in 2021, was Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Williams College, where she joined the faculty in 1970. Dr. Cramer published more than 90 research articles and five books, on topics including defense mechanisms, narcissism, and longitudinal personality development. She was a recipient of the Bruno Klopfer Award from the Society for Personality Assessment and the Murray–Helson Award from the Association for Research in Personality. At Williams, Dr. Cramer was the first woman to hold the position of full professor, the first to chair a department, and the first tenured female professor in the psychology department, and she cofounded a committee that fought for and won salary equity and maternity leave for women. In addition to teaching and research, she maintained a private clinical psychology practice for much of her career and held staff positions in hospitals and institutes.

• I. Origins of the Thematic Apperception Test1. Introduction 2. The TAT II. Interpretation of the TAT 3. Narrative and Storytelling 4. Context and Storytelling 5. The TAT and the Life Story Narrative 6. Gender Identity: An Interpretive Perspective 7. Defense Mechanisms: Another Interpretive PerspectiveIII. Studies of Clinical Patients 8. The Storyteller's Narrative 9. The Anaclitic/Introjective Perspective: Two Personality Organizations 10. The Interpreter's Perspective: TAT and Psychopathology IV. Changing Narratives: Studies of Normal Development 11. Developmental Differences in TAT Stories: Children and Adolescents 12. Developmental Differences in Adult TAT Stories V. Research Issues with the TAT 13. General Issues in TAT Research 14. Questions of Reliability and Validity 15. The TAT in Personality Research Today 16. The TAT in Clinical Research Studies: Further Examples 17. Conclusion

This work is the most comprehensive, original, and creative integration of clinical and empirical approaches to the TAT yet produced. It begins with an emphasis on the multi-modal perspectives inherent in the depiction of the TAT as a narrative, interactive event between story-teller and story-interpreter. The remainder of the book then enacts this conception of narrative by providing multiple, overlapping reviews of the vast array of clinical and empirical investigations of personality using the TAT. Her clinical interpretations of TAT protocols are brilliant and provide outstanding material for the practitioner and teacher alike. Her scholarly review of the reliability and validity of the technique and, more importantly, her critique of the way conventional psychometric standards have misunderstood the essence of the TAT are of great significance in the recent debate about the merits of various assessment procedures. The work is also compelling in its ability to give equal and lucid emphasis to both the clinical/psychodynamic and social psychology/achievement traditions that have historically intertwined as the two primary configuration of TAT use since its introduction 60 years ago. This book is beautifully written, clinically astute, and extraordinarily well documented. It will no doubt be the standard TAT reference for many years to come. --Steven Tuber, Ph.D., ABPP, Director, Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, City College Graduate Center, New YorkThe book provides a masterful synthesis of half a century of work on the TAT, placing it in the context of storytelling and narrative approaches to understanding individuals and clinical groups. Dr. Cramer does a particularly good job of integrating interpretative and empirical approaches to the TAT, showing how the interpretation of life narratives and the rigorous psychometric assessment of life narratives can be part of the same enterprise. --Drew Westen, Ph.D., Chief Psychologist, The Cambridge Hospital, and Associate Professor, Dept of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical SchoolThis is a scholarly achievement written in a clear and lucid fashion. Its encyclopedic coverage will be of inestimable value to clinicians and researchers alike. Dr. Cramer also provides a historical background with varied theoretical conceptualizations of Storytelling and Narratives to aid the student in appreciating this age old form of communication. --Carol Eagle, Ph.D., Head, Child and Adolescent Psychology, Montefiore Medical Center; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine - This book is a valuable resource for psychology students at any level who are learning the foundations of projective testing, and it is destined to become standard reading for doctoral students who are enrolled in projective assessment courses....Should be required reading for every clinician who will be administering and interpreting the TAT. --Psychiatric Services, 6/4/2004