In this episode, I reunite with Australian psychologist Dr. Petah Gibbs to delve deeper into the Athlete Apperception Technique (AAT) — a powerful projective tool developed to foster meaningful dialogue with athletes beyond performance. Together, we explore the importance of the person-first perspective, the value of context and narrative, and how AAT can help practitioners work more effectively by uncovering the lived experiences athletes project onto storytelling.
We reflect on the origins of the technique, the meaning of apperception, and the influence of past psychological research. Whether you're a sport psychologist, therapist, or simply curious about innovative methods in mental health and sport, this episode invites you to rethink how we understand, connect, and work with those who play sport for a living — as people first.
Importantly, Petah emphasized the flexible nature of the test’s administration. There are no rigid rules: it can be used in one-on-one settings, in written form, over Zoom, or asynchronously by having clients take home the images and respond at their own pace. Some practitioners prefer using only a subset of the 10 standard images, depending on client needs. Observational data such as body language, spontaneous utterances, or emotional reactions during story generation can also add interpretative depth. While some may argue for strict procedural controls, Petah maintains a client-centered stance: “You do you. Use it how you want to use it and get the best information you can possibly get.” This philosophy aligns with his belief that the complexity of working with human beings doesn’t always lend itself to rigid administration protocols.
Ultimately, the AAT is proposed not as a standalone diagnostic instrument, but as a complement to other tools—questionnaires, interviews, and behavioral observations—offering nuanced, context-rich insights into athletes’ emotional worlds. It invites practitioners to listen, to reflect, and to integrate, supporting a more holistic understanding of the person behind the performance.
Also, If you are interested in Dr. Gibbs original research study, you can find it here: Gibbs, P. M., Marchant, D. B., & Andersen, M. B. (2016). Development of a clinical sport projective assessment method: The Athlete Apperception Technique (AAT). Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 9(1), 33–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2016.1180637
Abstract
Within the field of applied sport psychology, there is an increasing appreciation for diversity of training models, research methodologies, and therapeutic approaches. For example, psychodynamic formulations and interpretations have begun to appear more frequently in the sport psychology literature. In keeping with emerging psychodynamic viewpoints, we believe the time is right to introduce a qualitative sport-specific projective instrument: the Athlete Apperception Technique (AAT). The AAT represents a new technique based on psychodynamic theory and established projective test construction principles. It was designed primarily as a clinical tool for practitioners and not as an instrument for quantitative research into personality. It does, however, have potential research applications, especially in clinical sport case study research and narrative analysis investigations. The AAT produces an idiographic understanding of athletes’ characteristics, anxieties, and motivations (both conscious and unconscious). We briefly review the literature on the development of projective techniques, explain the rationale underlying the development of the AAT, and present three sequential studies to explain the AAT image selection procedures that led to the final product.
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Discover all Dr. Petah M. Gibbs research here:
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Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology: Current Approaches to Helping Clients (pp. 101-
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Materials for Sport and Clinical Psychologists. London, Routledge.
assessment method: the Athlete Apperception Technique (AAT). Qualitative Research in Sport,
Exercise and Health, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/2159676X.2016.1180637
homonegativity, sense of belonging, and depressive symptoms among Australian gay men. Journal
of Homosexuality. doi: 10.1080/00918369.2016.1190215
depressive symptoms among Australian gay men and lesbians. Journal of Homosexuality. 60(1), 1-
15. doi: 10.1080/00918369.2013.735933
symptoms among older adults: a test of sense of belonging as a mediating and moderating variable.
Age and Mental Health, 17(8), 1023-1029. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2013.805402
(Eds.), Routledge handbook of applied sport psychology: A comprehensive guide for students and
professionals (pp. 101-110). London, England: Routledge.
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Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone, this is Mathias Alberton. I'm the creator of Martial Attitude. This is Martial Attitude Voice. This is a new episode, Dwelling, Navigating, Swimming, Diving into an incredibly interesting technique to really not only assess athletes, but to trigger conversation, meaningful conversation from which then you as a practitioner can really work with athletes on whatever they might need working on. I'm referring to the athletes' upper-reception technique. We have, in short, is AAT. We have conducted a couple of episodes before. And if you remember, if you check in previous episodes, we already met Dr. Petah Gibbs from Australia is a psychologist. done a long journey as a psychotherapist and psychodynamics PhD. was exactly the creation of this projective test specifically designed for small people.
I introduce to you again Dr. Gibbs. Hello Petah, how do you do?
Petah (01:35)
Hello, good to see you again. I'm loving that you're getting me an opportunity to talk more and more about this.
Mathias Alberton (01:43)
Well, but the thing is, to me, it's fascinating. But again, this is a call for everyone who thinks that there is more to sport psychology than just performance, and that athletes are first and foremost individuals. And what you have been working on and created is an important tool for me, for any practitioner in sports psychologist and on only but in sports psychology to to talk to conversate to To really do some important stuff with athletes. So it's a I mean, I think we really need need to dedicate a bit space about this for this technique. So thank you very much for allowing this to happen
Petah (02:41)
Yeah, you're welcome. And I absolutely 100 % agree on the person first perspective. You know, what they do for a job is very important to them and maybe to others around them. But them as people is probably what's most important. And so, yeah, definitely. mean, look, from years and years of working with people that play sport for a living, I've always had a very basic view of it as, know, it's more likely people are going to perform well at their sport if their life is in order, if they're reasonably happy and things are reasonably under control and, you not saying that you've got to be, everything's got to be perfect and you've got to be the happiest person in the world to play fantastic sport, but it certainly helps. You know, if we've only got so much mental energy and if we've got tonne things weighing down on our mind, can definitely have effects on how we perform and how we focus and concentrate. yeah, for me, it's always not so much about working with athletes, it's more about working with people who play sport for a living. But it's easier to say athletes. So I appreciate it. think we have very similar views on that.
Mathias Alberton (04:07)
Totally. Picking up from our last conversation, I was really wondering what was now, after a few years that you have created this technique, why the practitioner should really use it.
Petah (04:34)
Yes, well, I mean, I've been very lazy. mean, probably maybe people listening to the podcast. Some have some have stayed in academia after finishing master's thesis and PhD dissertation and got into publishing. I know a lot of my friends and colleagues that have been through that process a little bit over your topic, you spend so much time focused on the topic. And while this is absolutely something I love doing, by the time I handed that damn thing in, I never wanted to see it again. So it's the resilience really. I have very little resilience. It's the resilience from my PhD supervisors, Mark Anderson and Darrell Marchant, who both worked, stayed in academia and prominent sport psychologists. So they really pushed it and really taught it in their classes. And so quite a few students that came out of the universities over teaching it started to use it around the country and it spread a little bit overseas and people that were open enough to seeing, this is quite, quite different. It's almost everything, everything against what we've been told about how to measure people and how we do testing and what testing is. You know, this is kind of different or weird. So to hear, I spoke a bit about in the last podcast I did with you about how much we're influenced by the people we admire and the schools of thought that we go to and what we're taught. so quite a few people have been using it and the feedback's always been fantastic. Just the amount of extra information. This isn't a one, no test is a, one measure is the answer tool. this is, it's just another way of getting another piece of the jigsaw puzzle and understanding a person and trying to work with a person and developing a therapeutic alliance. It's all about collecting jigsaw pieces and trying to put together to try and get a better understanding, both you and the client of what the picture is. and sometimes that takes a long time. Sometimes it comes up pretty clearly, know, significant piece. So this AAT is something that a lot of clinicians have found is just another valuable tool in their toolbox. And I did want to point out the, we call it the athlete apperception technique because it's not a test. It's definitely a technique. It's not, you know, a test in the sense that we all understand a test. You know, it's not something necessarily that you go and score and you get a score and an answer. And, you know, here is, here is who you are. It's just, it's a technique. A lot of it's to evoke a dialogue. It's a lot of us to get people talking and even everyone, all of us have worked with people in sport and outside of sport that don't give you a lot. You know, we've all had those moments where
You get one word answers or they don't know how to articulate what they're wanting to say. And so this technique is really a technique to evoke dialogue because they're not talking necessarily about themselves that they understand. They are talking about themselves because they're using projection, one of the ego defense mechanisms. So they are projecting their own unconscious ideas or their own thoughts and experiences in life, relationship experiences, onto the stories that they're telling, because every story is completely unique, but we do see common themes that come out of those stories. The other part of it is it's called a perception as opposed to perception. And Henry Murray was one of the people who he developed the thematic a perception test, the TAT. He was one of the people early on that wanted to apply the meaning to the difference between a perception. And so I always have it in my head, which is probably a very basic, maybe stupid, that a perception is really your perception of your perception. So we have a perception. There's a tree. My perception of that tree is that tree means to me Easter and Easter eggs, because I love Easter eggs, because, you know, the leaves are changing, which means it's autumn and da da da da here in Australia, anyway.
So Murray really talked about how interception really refers to the additional meaning that is assigned to the object. So it's not just I see a man and a woman talking in the image you're showing me. I see a couple talking. They're in a relationship. They're a couple. They're having an argument. And so he kind of came through that through, he did a very simple experiment in 1930s when he was starting really to develop the idea of the thematic outperception test, which is probably the gold standard, the one that everyone thinks about and uses other than the raw shot. But they're both projective tests, but they're quite different projective tests. He had his daughter and several friends staying the night. So he showed them a bunch of photographs of men's faces and said, well, tell me about who these men are, you know, explain: What you think of these men? And so they were like, yeah, they think that's a nice man and that man's got kids and that man. And then later in the night, he he put on a little bit of a scary movie and he played, you know, a little bit, you know, they were playing like a scary murder game and things like that. And then before they went to bed, he showed them the photos again and said, show me, tell me about these men again. What do you see? And he said that what the stories I were telling them are quite different. They were telling talking about how these men were way more malicious, they were way more a bit evil. And so what he was trying to do was really demonstrate our perception there, you know, because the fear of the game, so it wasn't just the face that they were seeing, it was their experience at the time, the fear of the game, you know, night time, and now they're looking at strange men's faces. And so that's kind of the understanding of our perception.
Yes, so those, that's just kind of briefly explaining the, just the name of the test and, but it explained a little bit more than that, but really what we're trying to look at.
Mathias Alberton (11:26)
So it is exactly what you understood in the first place, but adding up the idea of the context, which is a life context in the sense of delivering the AAT to a set of clients. they didn't just watch the horror movie or play the strange game, the wicked game at night time, but they might go through or have gone through certain things and therefore, yes, they do understand the tree as easter eggs, as connected to easter eggs, but also there is more to that because the context, they come from a specific context and this is projected into the narration they are about to tell.
Petah (12:27)
That's right. And that's our perception. It's really our perception of our perception. The perception is, there's a tree. I can see a tree. That's basic perception at a psychology level. I can see a tree. Now, what am I placing on a hand? What does that tree mean to me? And so everyone's story is going to be slightly different. And so when developing these type of tests, we still work really hard at the image set and we'll probably talk a little bit about that, how we develop the image set and because all these projective tests, like all good psychology tests, I mean, I could list off a few really bad psychology tests, but they're usually the free crappy ones that you find on the internet. You know, that haven't spent years being developed and being peer reviewed and have the right psychometric analyses. All good tests need really good scientific method, solid research. so thematic and perception test is exactly the same. It's not just saying, here's five pictures of people playing sport. Now tell me, tell me the stories. You've got to, we have to know what, what are the common themes that are generally told to this story. And so we can see when there's a real variation.
Mathias Alberton (13:45)
So just for the audience now listening to the podcast, they might came across this podcast randomly or they are curious about projective tests. I don't know how you ended up here guys, but when we're talking about projective tests and now that maybe we're going to dive a bit in how it is structured, let's say we are roughly talking about you, let's say the client and in front of someone else, let's say the practitioner, and the practitioner is showing you a picture, a drawing, a cardboard, let's say A4 format about that size, and he show it to you, and after that has been shown, you are... asked to create a story. What happened before, what's happening now, what's going to happen next, who are the protagonists of this scene. So you...
Petah (14:56)
Who's the hero? The hero is a very important piece of it. That's one of the most, because we're generally, there's more than one person depicted in the image. So it's important for them to identify who's the most important or who's the person you identify with the most.
Mathias Alberton (14:59)
The hero. And one after the other, we go through a series of pictures. So now with Petah, we are going to, let's say, try to understand a bit the mechanism that is behind the creation of these pictures. So when he refers to images, he refers to images that you are shown or that you, as a practitioner, are showing to someone in front of you. That's what I wanted just to... to clarify for the audience listening to it.
Petah (15:46)
Yes, and what we're looking for, this is where thematic comes from, is we're looking for the themes that are consistent throughout. So sometimes they hit you in the face, they're quite obvious. You know, the same theme of anxiety or lack of confidence, things like that might be told in every one of the 10 stories in some way or another. So that's a note there. You know, it's a red flag. Okay, there seems to be... is every time this person's shown an image of a particular scene with people involved, they're seeing anxiety, an anxiety provoking event. So the theme that's going through this means that maybe something, maybe that's something that needs to be focused on or investigated a little bit further. because some, so the next person mightn't have any, mightn't see any type of anxiety provoking event in that image.
Mathias Alberton (16:38)
So I guess... So the question here, I guess, is in adopting classic projective methods like the TAT to the sporting context, what unique challenges did you face in designing sport-specific images that were both evocative and ambiguous? And please also explain us a bit this idea of ambiguity for the images.
Petah (17:15)
Yes, well, when I was researching the TAT, there's been quite a few versions of the TAT. The authors of the TAT themselves made a child set because they thought the type of images they were showing in the TAT may be not appropriate for children or then the children might not understand. So a man and a woman that most people tend to see as having an argument or being distressed, maybe in a relationship having an argument or a fight. Maybe that isn't something that you'll evoke as much information from a child. And so therefore a different set was set up for children and it was researched and they went through many, many images and found a set for children so that they found a set that evoked really good, rich stories from children.
And then years and years later, they did one for seniors, the SAT. And so that was for more elderly people. And so there were more issues around, again, you know, the man and woman having an argument. Now, while an elderly person will have maybe lived that, maybe that's something that's not as present in their life. So they focused on things that were probably more present in people's lives at an elderly, in an elderly lifestyle. And so that was set up for elderly people. Probably the most significant version of the TAT that came out that was quite different was probably 15 years after the TAT was developed and it was very popular in the United States and it is all the way around the world now. A clinician named Thompson was working with mostly African American clients. He himself was African American and or maybe still is, I don't know how old he is now. But he found that he had used with Caucasian clients, he'd use the TAT and he was getting really rich stories generally. With African American clients, he was not getting anywhere near the type of richness of stories.
And so he thought, look, maybe if I change the images, they're just really, a lot of them are pencil drawings. There's a couple of photographs in there. What he did was he shaded in some of the people's skin and changed some of the characteristics of the people pictured in the images so that they looked more African-American and did that and then started using it with clients and collected a bunch of research. And he found that the stories became way richer when he was doing that. And he concluded that really this identification was greatest when the pictorial material really reflected the culture and experience of the individual. And when I remember reading that one sentence and thinking, there's, to me, that was a reason to make a sport version where there's sporting situations. know, so for example, there's a picture of two runners coming to a finishing line, you know, middle distance, long distance, short distance runners, one tripping over the line and one running through what looks like the ribbon. Now for somebody who defines himself as an athlete, they're more likely to identify with that type of culture and experience. again, we go back to that. Who's the hero here? Who's the person you identify with? Who's the main character? It's really the question you ask. You know, just the simpleness of, the person who's fallen over before they've crossed the finishing line or the person who's won. There's a little clue. That's clearly a little clue as to the thinking of the person. It's not the answer. It doesn't give us the whole picture in any way since shape or form, but it's just a, there's a note. So, and then if you see that, you know, as you know, what's happening here, or the coach is yelling at this young boy in this photo and the coach is yelling at this kid and he's been kicked off the team or, you know, they're choosing sides and this kid didn't get picked because he's no good and he feels bad about himself. If they're the stories that are coming out, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, that's something we could probably examine in our clinical work. So taking from that, the whole idea was really getting down to developing the image set. And that took a long period of time. I just started collecting lots of pictures of images. Of course, we had to be really careful not to break copyright laws and things like that. But it was basically just finding images that thought, here's an interesting one. It didn't have to always be two people. In a situation, could have been one person situation across all different sports, hundreds and hundreds of images. And we've eventually got down to a preliminary set and thought, okay, let's really have a look at these and figure out, you know, we didn't want to double up. So there might've been two images.
Mathias Alberton (22:50)
How many pictures are we talking about here at this stage?
Petah (22:54)
There was probably a couple of hundred, 150 to 200 images that we kind of looked at and some were just visually great pictures. But looking at them thought, that's kind of covered in this image and this image is maybe a little bit better. And you want it to be fairly ambiguous. you don't want it to be, want it to be people to be able to recognise the situation, but you don't want it to be telling the story for them.
You know, so some of them were maybe a little bit, were not ambiguous enough. So we basically whittled that down. then I was, luckily enough, I got 12 sports psychology experts from around Australia and a couple of Americans. And we got them to do a rating, looking, they understood what the purpose of the development of the test was, looking at it and they rated.
They spent a lot of time, but they went through 48 images and they rated them on a whole bunch of different guidelines and what does this image evoke for you? What do you think this image would evoke for athletes? You know, those kind of things, a whole, you know, a huge range of different ideas.
And so getting all of that back, seemed pretty clear that the images that were really standing out and we got 27 images and then we got them drawn into original sketch drawings by my sister who's an artist. And so we had an image set. And then from that point, we then trialed it on a ton of people using getting them to tell stories, you know, so we actually used it as a picture book and they were able to write stories, know, take their time, take it home. We had some people sit there and the stories we were getting them to write, you know, I've used it in that way too. could, I mean, there's a little manual that you can use where you've got the picture and then you've got a couple of pages of writing sheets and say, here, look at the image and answer these questions. Who's the main person?
What are they doing? What's happening? What's going on in their head? What's going to happen after this? What are their wishes and hopes? You know, all of that. And so that would, you know, people would write these really interesting stories. And so there wasn't a whole lot of difference between doing that and doing a verbal where you sat in front of a person and ask them those questions. It was actually a lot easier, especially for collecting data. It was a lot easier because then you had the written booklet. They could take their time doing it and then we could transcribe it, so we did lot of transcribing. And so we did that and we finally whittled it down. We saw the ones that were probably crossing over a little bit, they were both kind of measuring the same thing, and then we got to our final image set. And we did a couple of case examples as well. Several of those, I think there was about seven, but I might be wrong.
We're talking, what, nearly, what was it, 2016 or something? 2006, eight, so yeah, it's a while ago. A case example, so we did more in depth. And so, yeah, basically the, that's how we developed the image set and that's what we went with and just using, you know, when it was one-on-one asking people questions, it was just using the normal considerations of administration, you know, city, you know, like you would in a clinical setting, you know, you want an atmosphere where people feel comfortable and relaxed and, sometimes people can time as well, you know, say, here's the image, tell me what you're seeing and answer these questions and then you know you can record the time that can be interesting to some people. I'm not overly interested in that. But also specific behavioral effective reactions you know so fidgeting facial expressions, spontaneous verbalizations, extra test comments you know laughter, different story responses and utterings and looking also at size and gestures and things like that too.
Mathias Alberton (27:43)
I have a few questions now as you were speaking through. I thought, okay, this is interesting. instance, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice way to... No, not at all. It's very comprehensive every time that you do, you answer the questions properly, but also you give a texture to the wider context. So for instance, now you ended up talking about a bit of the administration of the test. And I thought, well, for instance, this is a very interesting set of questions that could derive from this, the how you administer, rather than how you understand what has been happening, the administration how. So this is interesting for the listener because the listener might be an athlete or the listener might be a practitioner. So, okay, can I do this thing online? Can I do this in group? Can I do this must be in person? Must be recorded? Yes, the video, no, the video. Yes, the audio, no, the audio. You know, all these technicalities of applying the technique. So throughout your study, throughout the creation of the images and testing the pictures with so many people having more than hundreds of thousands of feedbacks. So you have tested, let's say, the images through different methodologies, let's say. So questionnaires, surveys, and so forth.
Petah (29:37)
Yeah, so we were collecting in that sense, we were also collecting quantitative data because we had a lot of responses. So it wasn't just the stories, the building up to the story, the stories in the final image set. It was people ranking them, people, a lot of participants. So I said in the last podcast, we had fully professional athletes to amateur athletes, semi-professional filling this out. So we've got a whole gamut of different people. The stories didn't change or they weren't, well, weren't, they weren't different. I won't ever use the word significant. They weren't different because they're just people, you know, whether they're a professional, fully professional athlete or they're a youngster or an amateur, they're just people telling us stories about what they want. and what they see. So the quantitative data was also an important part of that. And there is a way of using it, for those that are a little uncomfortable, just using it as maybe what we could call subjective validity, know, faith validity in a way, because we talk mostly, we're programmed, most of us in... maybe psychology across the world and the sports psychology, very much about ability and reliability of tests, of course. a technique such as this, we're really talking about real subjective validity and faith validity. We used techniques, good psychometric techniques. There's no doubt about that. We had to do that. I had to do that from PhD requirements. there was a lot of, your face validity is a very important part.
You way a question is developing a questionnaire, the way a question is developed and how it's worded is massively important. You can completely lead a person to answer it in a particular way. I've seen some rubbish tests. mean, we all have. seen rubbish tests on the internet. I've seen some rubbish pencil and paper tests too. I won't mention any of them. you know, 10 questions, 10... 10 question questionnaires, you know, and you are you a morning person? You know, and then you get the answer back saying, well, you're an IFNJ, and you really are. You've got a lot of energy in the morning. Well, wow, how did they get to that conclusion? You know, so just I'm having a bit of a stab at really poorly constructed tests there. know, so certainly the there has to be capacity in some sense to get this subjective validity and a confidence that you are interpreting this the right way. And often that goes with being trained in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis or projective test techniques, but it doesn't have to. People learn as they go along and a lot of it's experience and just listening and reading and not making too many claims. Just say, again, like I went back to the beginning, it's just another piece of information and it should always, I think I am a great believer that when we're trying to attribute the best to sports psychological knowledge, we have to integrate any findings with multiple sources of data, know, questionnaires, intake interviews, you know, so we're looking at the whole gamut. We're trying to get a best picture of the total person. So in that sense, this test, this technique kind of is just that other piece.
Mathias Alberton (33:20)
And I think this is really an important piece of information. So the AAT is proposed as not an alternative, but as a compendium to other techniques and tools that the practitioner can use.
Petah (33:39)
Yes, and it might be for every practitioner, but it might be for every client. You might love it. I love it. And I'm biased because I had a hand in developing it with Mark and Daryl. So I love it. But there are clients that I would never have used it with. And some of the images, I wouldn't have done the whole image set. I know some practitioners that only pick out of the 10 images, they only pick four or five that they like to use.
And like, and the met what you mentioned before is about you do record it. Do you not record it? Do you video? Do you have to be in person? My view, I mean, some people might have a view that there should be really strict rules. I'm my view is you do you, you use it how you want to use it and get the best information that you can possibly get.
And I don't see a difference between, you know, using it over Zoom. Are you getting somebody saying, here, take this home, sit down in one place, try and do it all at once, write out your stories, bring it back to me and I'll have a look at them. I don't see any problems with any of that. I don't know how Mark and Daryl feel, you know, the co-authors, but yeah, I'm not overly fussed with how that's used. think people, you know, the world's... difficult enough and working with clients is difficult enough that we need to insane administration protocols.
Mathias Alberton (35:09)
I can see this also, you know, since you first developed the thing in the mid 2010s, let's say, and now let's say roughly 10 years later for whatever happened. That is the pandemic, for instance, and a bit of technology information advancement. Of course, the use of online, whatever that might be, and applied as such this conversation, I mean, we're having a conversation, literally online throughout the globe. We are looking at each other, even though we're recording audio only, it is so natural. And it wasn't even imaginable back then perhaps when you were developing the things as well, you know, if you do it online, it might be a bit rusty, cracky, you know, might be now so...
Petah (36:01)
Yes.
Mathias Alberton (36:19)
such a good idea. Instead, considering the thing right now, I said, well, actually, I share screen. You are on your own. I mean, if you are in a good place and nobody is disturbing, you're a bit into the conversation we are having. And full screen appears the image. I think it's good enough.
Petah (36:20)
Yeah.
Well, I think that's fantastic. I would say to a client, do you mind if I, while you're telling me about what you're seeing and all those answering all these questions, I'm going to take some notes. So, you know, I'll put my microphone on mute and I'm going to type away and make some notes about your story. It's a perfect way of collecting it.
Mathias Alberton (37:04)
And the questions that you are posing to your clients, which are the questions, all of the questions that you pose for each of the images.
Petah (37:18)
Yes, yes, so the who's the hero? Or you probably don't use the hero. That's a bit of an old word. That's a hundred years old instructions. So who's the main character is what you'd say. Who's the main character in this? There's a couple of images where there's only one person. So they'd say, oh, the little boy. You know, there's a boy sitting by himself. What's happening?
What's he thinking or she thinking? What's going to happen? You know, those type of questions. mean, and you can build on that and you can get them to say, well, can you explain that a little bit more? You know, they're having a fight. What are they having a fight over? And people will come up with a story. It's amazing how much people will talk.
You know, we even have the problem of, you know, when they've talked too much and you've got to say, OK, I think that's good for that question. Why don't we move on to the next image? Some people really, everyone's a little bit different. Some people really get into it. So it's really just having a look at those.
Mathias Alberton (38:37)
It seems a bit obvious now, maybe, but better specifying with the author of the technique. As far as I'm concerned, I understand that the tool of the technique is quite flexible. However, would you say recommend, but have you seen that going through the set of images all in one session rather than split them apart in different sessions makes a difference at all.
Petah (39:13)
Look, generally the rule of projective test is that you try to get through them in one session. That can be difficult. You know, we have the challenges of people in white collars and corporate officers making decisions on how many sessions we can have with the clinician and how long the sessions go and all of that crap. And we're, you know, some people are really, you know, tight with time. That's why, you know, doing a written thing, saying, here's some homework, would you mind filling this out? You know, like some people, some clinicians do that with their clients. Say, I'm going to email you a questionnaire, can you fill that questionnaire and send it to me? And then they can score it and have it ready for the next session rather than waste time. So that's where that can help. Generally, one of the instructions is try to do it in one sitting if you can. But you don't want to put anything too onerous on people. Maybe that also you could argue reduces the client's ability to really get into a story if they're like, God, I've got 10 images to get through. I'm just going to really flow through this. I can do three today and I can do three tomorrow.
Mathias Alberton (40:36)
I do feel a bit like... It's like just to stay on topic with narration and to projection, if I may play on words. It's like to go to the movies. So if you can see the movie in one go, as it was meant to be shown... is a bit better than to see it in two, three different sessions. Isn't it? It's a bit like that.
Petah (41:11)
Yes, it is more ideal. Yeah. And I mean, I would say almost all questionnaires, the administration really does require that sit down and do this, fill out these, you know, like a Neo is 240 questions. It can take some people 40, 50 minutes. Some people get through it in 30, but it really is important for people for a number of reasons for people to fill out the questionnaire and complete the task. So ideally that would be the case. But this is such a unique technique that it can, I feel it can break away a little bit from those type of constraints. yeah, ideally you can get people to do that.
Mathias Alberton (42:05)
And the session, we're talking about a 50-minute session, one hour and 15-minute session. Have you figured out ideally how long a session would need to be?
Petah (42:21)
Yeah, I think you can do the 10 minute Niche's. I've always assumed that colleagues of mine that have chosen to leave a couple out, like the TAT itself has got a lot of cards and I'm really off the top of my head. think it's 31 and there's even the 31st is a blank card. It's just, there's nothing on it. So that really throws up. That's a real psychoanalytic type of approach in the sense of I'm not giving you any stimuli.
I'm not giving you a question. I'm just giving you a blank sheet of paper. Now you free associate. That's the whole idea behind that. So I'm sure a lot of practitioners don't use that card. you know, I think Murray even talked about that, you know, like, ideally, there'd be a small, you know, a set that you would pick the ones you want, or these might be the few that you can use.
We have got, you know, we've got a children's set, like I copied the idea from the TAT. So we've got the AATC, which is the children's set. And then we've got the AATS, which is the supplemental set. So that set is another five images, but they're looking at other issues, know, other demands.
Mathias Alberton (43:44)
So, and this would go in the same session of the standard sets, you reckon?
Petah (43:56)
Um, I don't, I think you'd find it difficult to get through 15 cards and I think you'd be, I think you'd be asking a lot of the client too. think 10, I think 10, 10 is a lot, you know, so yeah. So I mean, if you can spend five minutes, look, you'll get, you'll get one image where you might only get a minute or two, you know, where it's like, well, that's just two people. That's a coach yelling, yelling at a kid. Yeah. And what else else is going on and what's going to happen?
Mathias Alberton (44:01)
10 in one hour.
Petah (44:25)
Well, nothing else. He's just pissed off with the kid and the kid is scared of the coach and the kid's just gonna go out and play. That's the end of the story. That's all you're gonna get.
Mathias Alberton (44:35)
I think that there is plenty of material here to think over and we can take this conversation further another time dwelling a bit and more specifically in each one of the sets to understand how they are composed and what they are trying to speak to the mind and to the soul of the athletes they are shown.
Petah (44:51)
Talking about what the listener, if they've listened this far and listened to a couple of the podcasts, they might be interested in, well, and what are you actually looking for? So, yeah, we have really specific, which have been developed over a long period of time, the stimulus properties of each image, you know, so basic description and then what the image is really trying to evoke and what are the frequent plots even, you know, what do most people, what do most people see? And then the variations as well, like sometimes you'll get people, and this is a TAT method, sometimes you'll get people who will mention this. Now it's rare, but they might mention that. And also gender variations. Men might answer this way and women might answer, or pick up on this point and women might pick up on this point and vice versa.
Mathias Alberton (45:59)
It is precisely what I want to explore more in depth in future episodes, because I think that this needs a proper space for each one of the sets to explore a bit this in depth. And saying, wrapping this up, I did have a question. I don't know. Do you think you can answer this? You mentioned before the projective test which did not have so much of a result over different population with different background, cultural background, ethnographic background. And so, you know, it was enough for the guy to shade a bit the texture of the images in order to have, again, some sort of response as for the Caucasic population it was using it on before. With the AAT, because the images are all about sport, and that was how we started this podcast, so I think it's a nice wrapping up question. Do you think that the theme, the clear settings, sport settings, has been enough meaningful conversation across cultures, or in retrospective you think that now and then it could have been interesting to shade some of the characters of the cards, of the images?
Petah (47:41)
Yes, that was part of our development of the image sets as well, was trying to get somewhat of a culturally diverse representation, so to speak. it could be developed. The drawings themselves are very, very basic.
They're not stick figures, but they're pretty basic drawings. so they could represent when you get looked through some of the images, you know, it doesn't necessarily some of them don't aren't gender specific. They're not race specific. They might not be cultural specific, but they're very specific to sport and the situations in sport. You know, it's the relationship between athlete and coach, the relationship between athletes, the relationship between a young athlete and an older athlete or a coach, isolation, failure, success, things like that, which are even, you know, even sexuality. There's cards that can tap into that where you get quite a few responses, which are generally normal responses as to the relationship between some athletes.
And so I think it really, you know, kind of covers, you know, really covers a whole range of things, you know, injury response, confidence, competent, competitive anxiety, achievement, motivation, you know, aggression, social facilitation, mental preparation, task cohesion, self-talk, conflict, group cohesion, you know, anxiety, or there's a whole ton that they're everything, every the tiny images all tap into each of those different areas in some way or another. So there are, think there's enough here to answer your question. There's enough representation. doesn't mean, as I mentioned, I think maybe in the last podcast I did with you that there's been a Japanese and a Spanish version where they.
You know, just basically they took the images. don't know how they've manipulated the images if they did, and they might have tried to make them more specific to their culture. But these are just very pure. I if we talk about sport, we're talking about at the highest level, you're talking about World Cups and World Games and Olympic Games, know, where everyone from everywhere, wherever their background is, they're all doing the same thing. Swimmers all hop in the pool and they're all wearing the same thing and they all hop in the pool and they swim.
So it doesn't come into it as much. I think it covers it all.
Mathias Alberton (50:38)
Petah, thank you very much. It has been super interesting and I can't wait to learn more. Really, thank you.
Petah (50:47)
Yep.
Well, thank you. Appreciate the time.
Mathias Alberton (50:50)
Thank you everyone who has been listening not only so far, but is still listening on Martial Attitude Voice Podcast. And who is curious about the AAT, please refer to me for any question so I can in the future post these questions to the holder himself or other sports psychologist for other topics if that was the case.
And as usual, I invite you to learn more about what I am doing currently at Martial Attitude. So I'm developing this system of training bespoke for visually impaired and blind people. And I do workshops every Sunday in central London in order to gain a bit more special navigation skills and to enhance confidence primarily when touching and being touched by other people in social context in different situations. So I think we are doing something really nice. We have a nice cohort of people training with me and we've been doing so for months since last year in September.
If you're interested or if you know someone who might be interested, you know as usual, you keep in touch.