Sometimes a cigar, even painted by a madman, is just a cigar.
The present pursuit is an entertainment, not an assessment.
I’m not suggesting that there’s no psychological/psychiatric utility to the interpretation of art products, but that
- This should primarily be on the basis of structural elements;
- Content interpretationis highly susceptible to contamination from previous knowledge and from reading theory into the images;
- The theory base of a content interpretation may be reductive and not empirically valid;
- Culture plays a huge role in our understanding of symbolism;
- No diagnosis should be made without multi-modal assessment.
The slight butt-like curvature of the copy does not appear in the original. If this is what the professor is talking about, the professor is not doing a good job as a diagnostician. Knowing what someone’s psychological issues are can lead to all sorts of reading in that is post hoc (based on previous knowledge of the issues). It reminds me of a piece of common knowledge from some time ago: It was well-known that gay men could not whistle. (Sorry, I can’t pull up a cite for this right now, but a Google search will demonstrate that a number of people still believe this/worry about this. It may have been Evelyn Hooker who disproved it but without PsychInfo I can’t find out.) To test this, a sample of gay men was evaluated for ability to whistle. Many could not. (And therefore, reductively, lesbians can whistle.) Great; use this to screen gay men (from the army or whatever). However, there’s a restricted rage problem. Evaluate a sample of straight men. It turns out the same proportion can’t whistle. Unfortunately, the lack of empirical validation doesn’t seem to stop some folksfrom asserting that there’s a subset of gay men who can’t whistle (which is true) and that this somehow is a characteristic of a group of gay men that would differ from straight men (which is not true). You may think you can generalize about gay men on the basis of assessment. You can develop some common observations, and assume that they tell you something about gay me. They don’t, because when a less-restricted range is used (i.e., matched samples of gay and straight men, you can’t tell a gay man from a straight man using standard psychological assessment techniques, including drawing and projective techniques.
Similarly, a standard drawing testoften use to provide evidence of a history of sexual abuse in a child does not differentiate between kids with this history and kids with no known history when both groups are tested.
Show the picture to someone who doesn’t know the artist and you’ll generate a huge range of ideas about the artist’s psychological issues. This we already know, since it’s what’s happening now. Some will be inaccurate and some will be accurate. If I gave you a random picture from the web and told you that I drew it, you’d interpret it on the basis of what you know about me; if you didn’t know me, you’d guess based on the drawing and some guesses would be correct while others wouldn’t, even if I neither drew nor selected the picture. With a picture I actually drew, you might correctly understand some of my issues, but let us also notice that in the context of the question, you’d be looking for pathology rather than strengths, and you might be assuming that something you found was a problem in my life. Even if it’s an accurate indication of my issues, you might assume that it was a big, active, problematic feature of my life when functionally it might not be.
Interpreting the linked image from the perspective of some fairly standard textbooks on the House-Tree-Person technique, one would be drawn immediately to suggest castration anxiety (based on the diminished or absent chimneys in the copy). However, empirical studies of the theory behind this have demonstrated that this interpretation would be nonsense and not valid or useful.
Interpretation of drawings is generally most useful for diagnosis of brain damage. Most meaningful brain damage causes problems in drawing expression that are not subtle. These involve missing elements, highly misscaled components, repetitions, reversals, large-scale distortions. These show up in both free drawing and copying of figures such as the linked image. This has nothing to do with “madness” but with brain damage or abnormality.
Interpretations of drawings for psychological purposes are not well-validated in relation to the content of the drawing. Any theory that purports to reveal psychological problems on the bases of content (i.e., using the drawing as a “projective” of unconscious beliefs) should be examined for its theoretical base. I’m not saying that the content of drawings can’t be usefully interpreted, but that some theories are reductive and not supported. For example, I was taught to interpret the absence of a chimney as castration anxiety (including in females). This interpretation derives from Freudian psychodynamic theory. However, 1) this has not been substantiated, and may well be invalidated, by empirical examination; 2) this theory was developed in the U.S., where kids are much more likely to draw a stereotypical house (square structure, two windows[one to each side of the door] with square pane divisions, a door with a knob on the right, a triangular roof with a chimney with smoke coming out of it, and a path leading to the door) than are kids in the rest of the world, who tend to draw their own house. Many houses in the world don’t have chimneys.
If a person is in psychological/psychiatric/medical treatment, I’d expect that their drawings would reflect some content related to that experience, just as I’d expect their conversation to reflect this. Studies such as this oneare interesting but don’t provide any big reveal, and though there was some attempt to make the study more valid, the evaluators still knew that these were drawings by medical patients undergoing surgery.
I believe that there are good uses for drawing, copying, and projective testing, in the context of a larger, multi-modal assessment that includes the examinee’s input about the applicability of the interpretations, particularly when the interpretation is focused on structural issues, relationship to cultural norms, and subjectively known and unknown phenomena as confirmed by the examinee. The current entertainment is a party game. We can enjoy it but it’s not an example of good practice.
That’d be “restricted range.” You may interpret if you’d like.
Gay men. Ditto.
I think someone touched on this, but in looking back through the posts I can’t find it. It looks to me like the right side of the painting is the left side of the painting seen from a different angle. (And vice versa.) In fact, there is a cut off line down the middle of the canvas. Remove the figures in the foreground and the baby carriage/ skis from the people near the houses and the two are very similar.
Maybe this is a form of brain damage or abnormality like Shoshana mentioned.
The three teams of horses are moving at breakneck speed, being whipped on and on through a populated area, yet the people riding the sleigh and those in the background are indifferent to the possible danger.
The theme therefore might be about bystanders not perceiving what the painter regards as self-evident danger. Should this point to delusional paranoia or paranoid schizophrenia?
Why should it point to pathology? If you’re correct, and this is not merely a feature of the original that has been copied, the painter is demonstrating good reality testing by perceiving the danger.
It could have been, except that the site that’s linked explains the discontinuity as a scanning problem, and the similarity of right and left figures is present in the original.
This digg article seems to indicate it was all a hoax.
That not one of the riders appreciates the objective dangers is an indication of the painter’s “good reality testing”?
[BTW, I didn’t read anything about this being a copy. Must re-read OP.]
I imagine holding in all your anger could make it harder to whistle.
Thanks for your very informative post.
Ah, Yes. I should have paid more attention. The link has the title, “Could this be the new DaVinci code.” There’s your answer right there… a crock of crap from beginning to end.
Coming Soon to a Theatre near You!
No, but that the painter indicates the danger to us is. That is, if it’s a feature of the copy not present in the original.
The copyl appears to be at the Moscow Museum of Outsider Art. The Russians have in the past given us psychiatric diagnoses such as “creeping schizophrenia,” which was characterized by disagreeing with the state (since you’d have to be crazy to disagree with the state).
At least that’s what I think of when I see that painting.
Criminy what a racket!
Either that or the center sleigh is on fire and the occupants are going to be burned alive and can’t bail out without killing themselves.
According to the website, the biggest hint yet has been that the snow is melting (as ca be seen on the bottom left corner) and the people in the sleds are looking at you in horror wanting to get out, for fear that there world cease to exist.
Here’sa page where you can see both pictures easily. In the original, there’s shrubbery in the lower left corner. This reproduction of the copy is clearer and you can see shubbery in that corner, albeit darker.