Who created the Children's Apperception Test?

Answer 1

Margaret Frances Jane Lowenfeld (4 February 1890 - 2 February 1973) was a British-born pioneer of child psychology and psychotherapy, a medical researcher in pediatricmedicine, and an author of several publications and academic papers on the analysis of child development and play. Margaret developed a number of educational techniques which bear her name and have achieved worldwide recognition. Basically Dr. Lowenfeld began her work on child psychotherapy from 1928.

British pediatrician and child psychiatrist, Margaret Lowenfeld is generally credited with the development of the therapeutic use of miniature figures in a tray of sand at her Clinic for Nervous and Difficult Children which she opened in London in 1928. Lowenfeld drew upon her memory of H.G. Wells' Floor Games, which describes the wonders of the miniature worlds Wells and his children created on the floor with a variety of small toys and blocks. The engaging and creative nature of the Floor Games had impressed Lowenfeld greatly, so she set about equipping her clinic with small toys and materials in what she called the wonder box. It was the children themselves who gave birth to what Lowenfeld named the World Technique in 1929 when they referred to the wonder box as, the world, and spontaneously began fashioning miniature worlds and scenes in the sand boxes in the clinic playroom.

Perceiving that children's thought processes were quite different from those of adults, Lowenfeld intentions was to develop a way that allowed for the direct expression of the mental and emotional experience of the child and which would lend itself to some form of record keeping so that their creations might be studied. Lowenfeld was concerned to avoid the superimposition of any theories onto the children's productions, preferring to allow any theory to evolve from the children's work itself.

"My own endeavor in my work with children is to devise an instrument with which a child can demonstrate his own emotional and mental state without the necessary intervention of an adult either by transference or interpretation, and which will allow of a record being made of such a demonstration. My objective is to help children to produce something which will stand by it and be independent of any theory as to its nature (Lowenfeld, 1979/1993).

The first professional demonstration of the World Technique was at a clinical conference in Paris in 1937. Carl Gustav Jung, who was in attendance at that conference, analyzed the World that Lowenfeld had presented. The therapeutic value of the World Technique was well regarded and documented in Lowenfeld child clinic and by the mid twentieth century came to be recognized as an effective means of treatment for adults, as well.