The "Non-existent animal" test belongs to the projective tests. By making a drawing, a person through the movements of the drawing hand reveals a certain content of his psyche. Of course, this reflection does not reflect the entire complexity of a person's mental world, but it reveals some of its manifestations. This test is recommended to be used in conjunction with other tests and techniques.
Instruction: Relax, listen to your intuition, give free rein to your imagination and invent and draw a non-existent animal and call it a non-existent name.
"Let go" of your hand, let it draw as if by itself. The drawing is done on a separate sheet of matte paper, preferably with a pencil of medium softness.
Interpretation
Placing the picture. Normally, the picture is placed in the middle of a vertically arranged sheet.
Placing the drawing closer to the upper edge (the closer, the more revealed quality) indicates high self-esteem, dissatisfaction with one's place in society, insufficient recognition by others, and the desire for self-affirmation. Placing the picture in the lower part is a reverse characteristic: self-doubt, low self-esteem, depression, indecisiveness, lack of interest in one's place in society, in recognition, lack of desire to assert oneself in society.
Interpretation of drawing details. When considering individual details of the drawing, the general approach to interpretation is as follows: a certain quality is more evident if:
- this detail is drawn especially carefully;
- there are several of these details;
- this part is enlarged in size relative to the others.
If a certain detail is not in the picture, its image is not sufficiently expressive, the detail is small in size - this quality is absent or weakly detected.
Head (or a part that replaces it). Position: the head is turned to the right (of one who draws) - a desire for activity, almost anything that is planned - is carried out, or at least begins to be carried out (although perhaps not completed). A person actively strives to implement his plans.
The head is turned to the left - the desire to think rather than to do something. He is not a man of action: only a small part of his plans are realized or at least begin to be realized. Often such a person is characterized by fear of active actions and indecision.
Full face position - the image "looks" at the viewer - is interpreted as egocentrism, exaggerated attention of the subject to his own "I", his problems.
Separate details of the head corresponding to the sense organs (ears, mouth, eyes).
Ears - interest in information about one's own self, in self-evaluation, a person is mainly focused on the opinions and evaluations of others.
Mouth. An open mouth in combination with the tongue, without drawing the lips, is interpreted as a great speech activity (talkativeness). The presence of lips is like sensuality. An open mouth without drawing the tongue and lips, especially shaded, is the ease of mistrust and fears. A mouth with teeth - verbal aggressiveness (a person snaps, gets angry, is rude in response to appeals). Closed round mouth - timidity, anxiety.
eyes is a symbol of a person's experience of fear, which is often not realized by a person. This is indicated by the sharp drawing of the iris, the strong inclination of the pencil when drawing the eyes. If eyelashes are depicted - a person is demonstrative, likes to be in the center of attention, "works for the public", is interested in the fact that those around him are impressed by his appearance, manners of dressing, the person attaches too much importance to the impression he makes on others. In men, this is often a manifestation of feminine traits in character.
Disproportionately increased head size - an indicator that a person values intelligence, erudition in himself and others.
The mouth, especially depicted in the form of sharp corners, is aggression. If the horns are combined with the bristles, the carapace, the aggression is of a defensive nature. If they are depicted together with nails, needles, other tools of attack, the aggression has a spontaneous offensive character.
Mane, wool, hairstyle – sensuality, emphasizing one's article, orientation to one's sexual role. A developed sexuality, up to fixation on the problems of sex, is indicated by the presence on the drawings of details related to sexual characteristics: udders, breasts, especially in the case of a humanoid figure (sometimes a person does not dare to depict them, focusing on the ethical norms of decency-indecency, in this case it is possible ask if the person wanted to draw them).
Feathers - manifestation of the desire for self-justification, for demonstrativeness.
The bearing, supporting part of the figure of the animal (legs, paws, sometimes a pedestal). The massiveness of this part of the body indicates thoroughness, thoughtfulness, the predominance of the rational over the emotional when making decisions, forming opinions, and conclusions; in general, reliance on essential provisions and significant information. Weak expression or lack of a supporting part of the figure indicate superficiality of thoughts, frivolity in conclusions, sometimes impulsiveness in decision-making. The nature of the connection of the legs with the body - accurate, thorough, or careless, the legs are weakly connected or not connected at all with the body - indicates the presence or, on the contrary, the lack of control over reasoning, conclusions, decisions. Homogeneity or unidirectionality of the shape of legs, paws, any elements of the support part - standard, banality of thoughts, decisions. Diversity in the form and position of these details – originality, non-standard thoughts, judgments, independence, creativity (manifested in the unusual form of these elements).
Parts protruding from the figure. They can be functional or beautifying the animal (wings, extra legs, tentacles, parts of the shell) - testify to the desire to cover various fields of human activity, self-confidence, inquisitiveness, the desire to participate in as many other people's affairs as possible, about winning a place under the sun, sometimes - about an indecipherable act of others. Decorating details (bows, curly curls, flowers, umbrellas) indicate demonstrativeness, the desire to attract the attention of others, mannerism.
tails They show an attitude towards their own actions, decisions, conclusions, and their verbal output. The positive or negative color of this attitude is expressed by the position of the tail (or tails): up - confidence, positivity, cheerfulness; down - dissatisfaction, doubt in one's own rightness, regret about what was done, said, remorse.
Tails turned to the right is an assessment of one's actions and behavior. Tails to the left - attitude to one's thoughts, decisions, to lost opportunities, to one's own indecision.
Contours of the figure. Attention is drawn to the presence or absence of protrusions (spike, shells, needles), sketchiness of the outline, presence of spots, darkening. If there are many sharp corners in the picture, this is a manifestation of aggressiveness. Darkness, staining of the contour line - the presence of fear and anxiety. Suspicion, apprehension is indicated by the presence of shields, curtains, doubling of the contour line.
Negligence, sloppiness, stereotyping of lines speaks of the corresponding qualities of a person. The presence of corrections and redraws may indicate that a person does not accept himself as he is.
Total energy. The amount of depicted details is evaluated - only the necessary amount is depicted to give an idea of a fictional non-existent animal (head, body, limbs; or body, tail, wings), whether there is a generous depiction of not only necessary, but also complicating constructions of additional details. The more constituent parts and elements, the higher the energy. If there is not enough, only necessary - lack of energy, fatigue, chronic disease is possible. This is also evidenced by the character of the line - a weak web-like line. A bold line with pressure indicates the presence of anxiety, especially if it is sharply pressed lines, visible even on the reverse side of the letter - this is a sharp anxiety. It is important to pay attention to which detail is drawn in this way - this will help to understand what the anxiety is related to.
General assessment of the animal. Animals are divided into those that threaten; those who fear and those who are neutral. An animal is the personification of a person, shows an attitude towards himself, his “I”, an idea of his position in the world, his significance or its absence, that is, the animal represents the one who draws, depending on the character of the one whom the person resembles (similar to a lion , a hippopotamus, a bird, a snail, ants, a white dog, a hare, an insect, an elephant, etc.).
The similarity of the drawn animal to a person, starting with the posture of the animal on two legs instead of four and ending with the "dressing" of the animal in human clothes (pants, skirts, dresses), including the similarity of the face to the face, legs and paws to the hands, indicates emotional immaturity, "childishness" in character and behavior according to the degree of "humanization" of the animal.
The mechanism is similar to the allegorical meaning of animals and their characters in fairy tales and parables.
The level of aggressiveness is revealed by the number and character (sharp or obtuse) of the corners in the picture. Direct tools of aggression - claws, teeth, beaks - are especially important.
If the general contour of the figure is close to a circle (especially one that is not filled with anything), then this symbolizes the desire for closedness, secrecy, closedness of the inner world, reluctance to open up to others, or reluctance to carry out this research. Such drawings usually provide little data for analysis.
If mechanical parts (tank caterpillars, propeller, electric lamp instead of an eye, antennae) are mounted in the animal's body in the picture, this may indicate the presence of a schizoid radical in a person (more detailed information about this feature can be provided by the study of character accentuations using appropriate methods).
Creative possibilities are revealed by the number of elements combined in the figure: banality and lack of creativity are evidenced by options when an existing creature (man, horse, dog, fish) is depicted, to which a certain detail taken from another creature is added (a cat with wings, a fish with feathers, a dog with fins). The creative principle, creativity prevails when depicting a figure consisting of many elements inherent in various creatures.
The name can contain a combination of meaningful parts ("flying hare", "hippo", "flycatcher", etc.). Another option is word formation with a book-scientific, sometimes Latin suffix or ending ("ratoletius", etc.). The first testifies to rationality, specificity in orientation and adaptation; the second is about demonstrativeness, aimed mainly at showing one's intelligence, erudition, and knowledge. Names are found as a set of letters without any meaning ("lyalye", "lyoshana", "grateker", etc.), which indicate a frivolous attitude towards others, ignoring danger signals, the presence of criteria in the surrounding world as the basis of thinking, the predominance of aesthetic elements in emotional thoughts over rational ones.
Ironic-humorous names ("Rynochurka", "Puzirend", etc.) are observed - this corresponds to an ironic-condescending attitude towards others. Names with repeating elements ("tru-tru", "lyu-lyu", "cous-cous", etc.) testify to infantility and childishness. A penchant for fantasizing is usually manifested by elongated names ("aberosinotikliron", "gulobarnikleta-myeshiniya", etc.).
