The Tao of Art Experiential: A Measurement Designed to Identify Jung's Typology
Graduation Date
Spring 1987
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy
Degree Granting Institution
Notre Dame de Namur University
Program Name
Art Therapy
Abstract
The Tao of Art Experiential has been devised for the primary purpose of identifying, by a nonverbal method, the psychological functions, including the attitudinal types of introversion and extraversion, as theorized by Carl Jung (1921). The instrument used is devised to obtain empirical material that can be analyzed and evaluated objectively.
The population studied was seventeen and eighteen year old adolescent boys and girls. Fifty-three psychology students were asked to draw four pictures that described:
- What animal they guessed to be in the box (Intuition).
- How they saw the animal they guessed, or an imaginary animal, or the live animal, (turtle) (Sensation) .
- Their feelings toward the animal (Feeling).
- Their thoughts about the animal (Thinking).
Knowledge of the individual's preferred attitude and conscious functions will assist the art therapist and the client toward an earlier understanding of the client's (as subject) actual method of orientation towards and relationship with, the object, whether concrete or abstract. It is theorized that this behavior can be observed, analyzed and understood by an art process. Conclusions reached by the analysis of the information gathered in this research project appear to support the application and use of the Tao art instrument to measure psychological functions and attitude-types.