After their widespread use during World War One, experts increasingly used psychological tests as a tool to rank and sort people in contexts including (but not limited to) education and employment. The TAT [Thematic Apperception Test] Summary Record Blank Manual of Directions was written by Pauline G. Vorhaus (Clinical Psychologist, Veterans Administration). The eight-page booklet contains information on purpose, description, instructions for administering the TAT, rules for recording responses, definitions of categories, suggestions for evaluating results, interpretation of categories, and summary. The cover page of the test also included a forward written by Henry A. Murray, who created the TAT. According to historian of science Rebecca Lemov, the test was first developed in 1938 and it “could access apperception, that is, the fantasy life and its fancies, imagination and its secret contents. The test was to be a way of making the invisible visible, the irretrievable retrievable in some manifest form.” For further context, see TAT Summary Record Blank (1983.0168.26).
Reference:
Rebecca Lemov, “X-Rays of Inner Words: The Mid-Twentieth Century American Projective Test Movement,” The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 260.
