The Blacky Pictures

Development and Utilization

The Blacky Pictures were originally created in 1949 by Gerald Blum as a modified projective technique for use in research studying the psychosexual development of children over five and adults; later, however, the test proved to be more useful with children (Science Museum, 2000). Then in 1950, the cards were published as a projective assessment technique to explore the dynamics of personality. The Blacky Pictures consists of 12 cartoons whose central figure is a dog named Blacky. In the pictures, Blacky is accompanied by a family of cartoon dogs in situations relating to psychoanalytic theory. Each cartoon represents a different stage of psychosexual development (the way sexual behavior develops, according to psychoanalysts). The cards are used similarly to the use of the Thematic Apperception Test is used with adults. The child is asked to make up stories about the cartoons and these are scanned for evidence of psychological dysfunction. The test also looks at family relationships. The Blacky Picture Test is not widely used today.

Theoretical Foundations

The Blacky Picture Test is heavily influenced by psychodynamic theory. The reaction of the children to the drawings was thought to indicate the extent of Freudian personality traits, such as an anal personality, castration anxiety, or penis envy. According to one reviewer in 1956, “Blum has devised a test ad hoc for psychoanalytic theory by the ingenious technique, which activates certain of the psychoanalytically formulated unconscious traits” (Beck, 1956).

Administration and Scoring

The standard procedure for administering the Blacky Pictures requires the examiner to present to the participant one card at a time, and they are to tell a spontaneous story based on the picture. Blacky's sex was decided by the experimenter, depending on the subject who was taking the test. For example, if the subject was a girl, Blacky was a female, and if the child was a boy, then Blacky was a male. The client then answers a series of inquiry questions that are mostly multiple choice. Finally, they are asked to sort the pictures into liked and disliked categories, and then to choose the one picture liked most and the one picture disliked most. When used with children, the Blacky instructions are presented in a simplified version and the inquiry questions are, for the most part, asked in open-ended form.

The test manual recommends scoring a protocol in terms of four sources: spontaneous stories, answers to inquiry questions, cartoon preferences, and related comments on other cartoons. Each source is scored on 13 separate dimensions: (a) oral eroticism, (b) oral sadism, (c) anal expulsiveness, (d) anal retentiveness, (e) oedipal intensity, (f) masturbation guilt, (g) castration anxiety (males) or penis envy (females), (h) positive