Exploring personality with The Drawing Completion Test.

Disclaimer - this is a test so open-ended it may give you food for thought, or a moment's amusement!

I was introduced to this test about 20 years ago by a psychotherapist I was seeing - it really interested me.  This past week I stumbled across it again and I thought I'd share it here because, well, it's a bit of fun, but also there's lots of room for discussion and reflection!

The Drawing Completion Test is actually called 'The Wartegg Drawing Completion Test' devised by Austro-German psychologist Ehrig Wartegg in 1934.  It's a a projective drawing test developed to reveal aspects of personality for diagnostic analysis which he developed within the *Gestalt psychological tradition in Leipzig, Germany.   (Gestalt is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology. Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.)

Like other projective drawing tests, his test is based on the assumption that the content and the qualitative aspects of the drawings reflect the personality of the person drawing.   

Can this really be so?

Let's find out.

As you can see from the image each section has a series of lines and shapes. 

Here's what to do now:

1. Take a blank piece of A4 paper
2. Using a thick marker pen, divide into 6 sections
3. Copy the lines and/or shapes in each section.
4. Then take some time quietly to draw a picture in each of the six divisions on the paper,
5. Do try to incorporate the lines and shapes already there in five of them. 
6. In the blank square, draw anything you like.

​There are no rules, just draw, doodle, complete each section.

When you're happy with what you've done.  Scroll down and read the symbolism of each area.

DO NOT READ the interpretative texts below until you have completed your drawings. 


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WAVY LINE:  this motif has to do with your emotional life.  Are you floating on or above the waves, or are you sinking below them?   Did you see and project something else altogether?

CORNER SQUARE:  the square is an architectural unit;  your response here relates to your feelings about your house/home or garden.  These may have implications with regards to aspects of your identity.

CIRCLE:  this drawing relates to your sense of self.  You may have been assertive or tentative (drawn a face, coloured in the circle etc) or you may have suggested that there are pressures from outside the circle of your self.  You may happily have seen yourself as a beaming sun or a flower.

CUT OFF CORNER:  this will reveal how you relate to your friends, who are at once part of you and separate from you.

TWO LINES:  the two lines stand for the inescapable dualism of the universe, especially the duality of sex.  You may have just revealed your deepest feelings about love (on the other hand, you may not.)

BLANK SPACE: your whole life is revealed in this space.  Without prompt or guideline you have revealed your innermost self.

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