Figure Drawing Anxiety Indexes: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Summary The authors reviewed 51 studies of human figure drawings with reference to 21 anxiety indexes. The research findings for each of 21 indexes with traditional clinical interpretation were categorized as: a) in agreement b) in disagreement: opposite direction, or, c) nonsignificant. The authors conclude that on the whole, research results seem to uphold the validity of a number of anxiety indexes. A total of 147 findings were found to be in agreement with traditional interpretation, while only 30 findings were significant in the opposite direction, and 78 findings were nonsignificant. Omission, distortion, detail loss, line pressure increase, heavy line, size increase and decrease, head simplification, and trunk simplification have consistently yielded significant results in the expected direction (increase indicates anxiety). Evidence was less consistent for reinforcement, line discontinuity, light line, vertical imbalance, delineation line absence, and transparency. Some studies found significantly less shading, hair shading, erasure, reinforcement, placement in the upper left hand corner and less emphasis line in situations where more was predicted. The article includes a discussion and an interpretation of these findings.