HIGHLIGHTS

This volume serves as a valuable complement to the Gardner Children's Projective Battery. The battery manual provides detailed instructions for the administration of the battery, but does not provide clinical examples. It is in this companioin volume that the clinical examples are to be found. Accordingly, this volume can be well viewed as an indispensible adjunct to the battery.

Most therapists appreciate the importance of an in-depth psychological evaluation before proceeding to a treatment course. If the child's problems are predominantly psychogenic (the most common situation) then a proper evaluation must include an in-depth assessment of the psychodynamic factors that underlie the child's symptomatology. The failure to conduct such an evaluation places the examiner in a significantly compromised position regarding the determination of the proper treatment program.

Since 1957 Dr. Gardner has been utilizing a wide variety of instruments designed to elicit psychodynamic material from children, e.g., freely drawn pictures, draw a person, draw a family, self-created stories, The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), The Children's Apperception Test (CAT) and The Rorschach Test (administered and scored by others). His vast experience with each of these instruments has enabled him to assess the weaknesses and strengths of each. The 18 items in the GCPB include many instruments Dr. Gardner has created over the years that enable the examiner to circumvent and avoid the problems and drawbacks intrinsic to the utilization of traditional assessment instruments. The utilization of token chip reinforcement enhances the child's motivation to respond. In order to circumvent the problem of repeatedly placing too many demands on the child to provide self-created material, the items are presented in a variety of ways and spread out so that the child's unconscious processes are not too greatly taxed in any one realm. This serves to circumvent the problem of the child's providing stories taken directly from books, television, videotapes, and/or reality experiences.

The Gardner Battery is designed to take about three to four hours to administer, preferably divided into three or four sessions on different days. Utilization of the parents in the assessment process is also described for those examiners who wish to avail themselves of this important contribution to the accuracy of the assessment process.

The clinical examples provided in this companion volume to the GCPB, provides the author's interpretations of material elicited from his patients and evaluees and should only be considered reasonably accurate interpretations for the particular children who were examined by him. This caveat notwithstanding, the volume provides a rich compendium of clinical examples that should serve as valuable guidelines for therapists utilizing the GCPB.

Learn more about the Gardner Children's Projective Battery