2017
Cairn
Marie-Christine Pheulpin et al., « The “Gaze” and Adult Clinic Patients in the TAT Situation : Methodological Research 2 », Bulletin de psychologie, ID : 10670/1.60smbf
While the gaze and its instinctual dimension are an essential and highly conflicted dimension in situations of projection, they play an even more specifically structuring role in the situation of the TAT, where the gazes of the subject, the clinician, and the characters represented on the TAT picture cards are caught up in a multiple mirror play. We suggest that, in the TAT situation, the enigma of “the gaze” is taken to its most acute point. This problematic is brought to light in studying the development of the TAT from Murray to the Paris School and the concomitant changes in the materials used and instructions given, as well as in the manifest content and the responses it may evoke. This consideration opens up new perspectives : it seems likely that the TAT situation reactivates early visual experiences, with the gazes of the characters being perceived as a field of paradoxes ; ultimately, the enigma of the gaze seems to play an important role in inviting projection.