The mosaic test as a diagnostic indicator of schizophrenia

• Main Author: Hansen, Irvin Arthur, Jr.
• Format: Others
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1954
• Subjects: Schizophrenia Diagnosis; Personality tests; Psychology
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/1233; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2232&context=uop_etds

Within the past decade the field of clinical psychology has become increasingly concerned with projective tests as a means of facilitating the understanding of the dynamic makeup of the individual personality. The enthusiasm over these techniques has resulted in the development of a barrage of projective techniques, purporting to uncover dynamics and "complexes" to a sometimes fantastic and often dubious extent. The subjective nature of these tests appears to render them most difficult to quantify and validate experimentally. Although the Mosaic test dates its origin twenty-five years back, there have been few, if any, successful validation studies. Those that have been attempted, have been poorly executed and their results inconclusive, or incongruous with other findings. The bulk of the literature on the test seems to consist of enthusiastic affirmation and ways and means of interpretation but little objective data to substantiate the findings. The test is considered by many to be most successful in its sensitivity to various entities of psychiatric diagnosis. That is, the mosaic design of psychotics, narcotics, and "normal" individuals, etc., are alleged to fall into distinct types. Those who a:re confident in this have offered certain criteria as indicative of mosaics of these various clinical groupings. The purpose of this study is to determine how successfully mosaic patterns constructed by persons with psychiatric diagnoses of schizophrenia can be differentiated from those constructed by non-schizophrenic (i.e., "normal'') individuals, and which criteria are found to be most valid in making such a distinction.