Hostility Themes in the Family TAT

Three TAT stories based on three cards each were produced conjointly by 126 three-member families. These stories were scored for the relative amount of weighted hostility and the percentage of overt hostility in the themes, based on the Hafner-Kaplan system. There were 50 families with normal children, 44 with emotionally maladjusted, 16 with schizophrenic and 16 with delinquent children. Analysis of the results revealed that the normal and schizophrenic groups produced stories which were low both in weighted hostility and overt hostility, whereas the stories of the families with emotionally maladjusted children were high in both variables. The delinquent-child families scored high in weighted hostility, but close to the normals in overt hostility. The last two sets of TAT cards given were the most effective.