The purpose of this paper is to investigate one of the basic assumptions of the Szondi test, namely, that in selecting pictures in the test subjects tend to assign consistent meanings to the pictures, although these meanings are not explicitly stated. In the following experiments, this assumption was tested by obtaining explicit reactions to the pictures in the form of identifications, using two different experimental methods. Similar studies have been made by Klopfer and Borstelmann (1950), Rabin (1950a), Fosberg (1951), Davis and Raimy (1952), and by Dudek and Patterson (1952). In all these investigations, American subjects with some experience of psychology or psychiatry were used. The most extensive work was done by Klopfer and Borstelmann, who used a sample of American psychology students, and suggested that their methods might be employed on “other segments of the population”. In the following experiments, their methods have been largely adopted for English subjects, of varying ages and occupations, including students.

The inadequacy of verbal development is the most striking handicap to the analysis of children. In the young child, under seven years, many concepts such as “happy,” “sad,” and “worried” are frequently not recognized at all; the child's very vocabulary is too limited for expressive purposes. Even as late as pre-adolescence the child may fail to correlate its inner experiences with its vocabulary. Besides the limitation of vocabulary due to intellectual immaturity there is also the Super-Ego's restraining action on what may be expressed verbally, in cold blood, and the younger the child the greater is this restraint. Most children, however, given an adequate medium other than words, are richly expressive of themselves but, unfortunately, it is now the adult who is inadequate and frequently fails to understand the language that the child is using, or, understanding it, cannot express himself in it. He “interprets” for the child in the more adult language of words, and sometimes even at a more adult level of erotic and emotional development than the child's. When this happens the child usually demonstrates its inability to correlate the inner experience which it is expressing in its own language with the adult's verbal interpretation. It either takes no notice or is frankly puzzled, or gives up its expression as if stunned by the unexpected.