In this episode, Dr. Petah M. Gibbs returns to unpack the thinking behind the supplementary set of images in the Athletic Apperception Technique (AAT). We explore why selecting specific cards can risk shaping the narrative, the importance of using the full set, and how grief, arousal, and self-diagnosis often surface in unexpected ways. Petah also shares insights on balancing emotional intensity across cards and what happens when elite athletes mislabel performance arousal as anxiety.
Also, an evocative story from Paul’s early career involving a response to a projective image helped us delve into how such techniques allow access to unconscious material, often unfiltered and deeply personal. Dr. Gibbs highlights the significance of silence in therapeutic work—how it invites genuine reflection and unprompted free association, echoing the principles of classic psychoanalysis. We also touch on the nuanced themes that may emerge in such assessments, including identity, sexuality, and interpersonal dynamics, illustrating that responses often transcend any fixed domain, including sport.
A thoughtful, rich continuation for anyone using or curious about the AAT.
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:
(Eds.) Applied Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology: Current Approaches to Helping
Clients (pp. 101-110). London, England: Routledge.
Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology: Current Approaches to Helping Clients (pp. 101-
110). London, England: Routledge.
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, a podcast about discipline, yes, about spoke psychology. Yes, of course. About visual impairment as well. Because as you know, in London, I'm conducting a series of workshops every Sunday in order to create a bit more confidence and navigational skills in visually impaired and blind people throughout some of the techniques derived from Kung Fu Wing Chun and therefore by breaking down movements in receiving and giving pressure to other people with other people in social settings, if you wish. But also as a visually impaired and blind people, it might be useful because training is not exactly that immediate, that simple, maybe sometimes it is a matter of starting training, starting doing something. And martial attitude training promotes the idea of training with someone who is fully sighted. So for instance, one of the things that I normally ask new participants to do is to come along with someone they know they would like to train with. be a parent, might be a brother, might be a sibling, might be a friend, might be a partner and they can train together with me, with others, and by doing this, they already create kind of an ensemble, a couple that can train in between sessions and so to further develop the skills between sessions. Last time we have opened a podcast, we were exploring the Athlete Apperception Technique, a test, if you like to call it such, to talk with the athletes, to investigate the, let's say, not the inner soul of the athletes, but to create a bridge between what they have experienced in life and what are the real things that actually are bothering them at present day.
This technique, in short, AAT, has been created by Dr. Petah Gibbs in collaboration with Professor Mark Anderson and Daryl Marchant in 2016, around those years, because this thing takes a long time to be developed properly by academic golden standards. And we did have a conversation about: What is it? How is it being developed? What is in titles? Why you use it? How you use it? How you deliver it? And today, we are again with Dr. Petah Gibbs. And we are trying, or we will try to unpack a bit more the sets of images which are used during the test, again, in brackets. Petah? Hello, welcome back. How do you do?
Petah M. Gibbs (03:32)
Hello, good to see you again or hear you again and yeah, so doing well, I'm really enjoying these opportunities to talk about the AAT and, you know, the development of it. I think we've spoken a bit about that with Mark Anderson as well in regards to, you know, the initial idea where it would possibly sit in the field of sports psychology and the importance of this type of technique or test and the uses of it and how, you know, we're probably getting down now to after discussing the development of it and the theory of it, the potential importance of it. We're talking now about the actual administration of it and how we actually administer this to the client and what the actual test is really designed as, as far as the types of images we're using and what those images generally elicit from athletes.
Mathias Alberton (04:43)
In the previous episode, we have spoken about, let's say, the standard set, which was decided to be kind of handy or manageable within, let's say, approximately an hour session. So 10 images, 10 cards, as you named them in the last episode, with the images, eliciting different constructs, exploring different aspects of being an athlete. it might be performance anxiety, it might be motivation, it might be relationships with important others. That might be the coach, the parents, the bystanders, the opponent, the crowd, and so forth. But we know that you have created more cards throughout a very long process of selection and ranking, let's say, by pool of expert during your PhD. The first set was finalized in 10 cards, but then there is an extra set, a supplementary set of five cards. What is this all about? Are they exploring different things? Why is there in the first place? Should it be used instead or on top of the standard set? Can you expand a bit on this?
Petah M. Gibbs (06:12)
Well, maybe a little bit of everything you just mentioned. Ideally, you know, the authors, like the authors of the TAT, the thematic ad perception test, and probably the authors of any test, you know, the idea of when you design a test, it's designed to be used in full. And then sometimes practitioners who become experienced in it start picking and choosing what aspects they might choose a certain grouping of images in a projective test and so therefore because that's what they're comfortable with. But the supplementary set really, as in the title, it refers to images that tend to elicit some things that maybe not are covered in the initial, the original set. The original set is really comprehensive.
It'll give, if the client is giving lots of feedback, the feedback will provide the clinician with a lot of information to work through and cover a lot of things about the person, know, interpersonal relationships and different aspects. But probably most specifically for this particular technique, it's more about trying to cover as many sports psychology themes. the supplementary set maybe will dig into a little bit of, you know, a few other sports psychology themes that haven't been covered. Of course, the danger of picking out cards because we make note of through all the testing and, you know, through many, many athletes and all the data that we've collected, you know, thousands and thousands of stories altogether. We decided on the set of 10 cards that seem to elicit the strongest, richest stories. So, for example, and when we would look at a couple of different images during the development, so we might find that there's two images that we liked that elicited really good stories, but they evoked really identical themes. So therefore it was a little bit of doubling up. So for example, there's a male athlete laying on a running track, very simple, basic pencil drawings, young male laying on a running track. And then another image had a young male baseball player sitting on a bench.
Or there was a young female softball player sitting on the grass with her head in her hand. And another image had a young male sitting on a chair with his shirt off and his eyes closed. they all of those images evoked themes such as losing an event, missing selection on a team, perceived pressure, disappointment, anger, frustration, rejection, having doubts about ability, lacking support from others, lacking motivation, sulking, avoidance, incurring an injury or even retiring from sport. But the two images from there, probably the male laying on the track and the baseball player sitting on the bench with his bag underneath the bench and underneath his legs.
They tended to evoke a broader range of themes than the other two I mentioned. So the choice was to go that way. And so that's when we got down to the after we completed the final 10 image set, we had quite a few other images that were really, really elicited great stories and were powerful, but there needs to be a limit to because of those constraints. mean, the TAT has a huge number of images in it. a lot of the mostly projective tests have set number of images, but people might find them challenging to get through, especially if you have a talkative client that likes to tell stories, you might only get through a few. So we see we we decided having run the these as, you know, run it through a lot of a lot of participants in our study. We decided that, you know, in that in that 50 minute session, with instruction, you probably get to those 10 images. So the other five might really as a supplement to that, they can elicit a few other sports psychology themes. And if things are going well and there seems to be this technique is really being useful in the relationship between the client and the clinician. And it's you know, the clinician feels like this is really useful and I wouldn't mind doing a little bit more, then they can do another five images. So just as we have a set for children. So with a child, it might not necessarily go to the 10 images to start with. You might just start with five, you know, if you feel like it might be a bit onerous to have a child answer questions to 10 images, you can just do the child set of five images bit more doable. So with the supplementary set, they certainly elicited themes such as vulnerability and conflict. So there's a of wrestlers, one standing behind the other, looking like they're about to start competing. There's a group of people kneeling on the ground with a coach kneeling over them with his hand on his head, all their heads are bowed can really elicit attitudes towards spirituality and faith. So depending on the environment and the culture, if this was used in certainly in Midwestern America where especially like the NCAA and all those strong teams are out all through the Midwest and the South, very, very strong religious backgrounds.
They're very much about praying, you know, before they run out and and participate. I know here in Australia, it's probably probably not as big of a thing. It's very probably more rare. It's more people's own relationship with their religion that they might do that. But I noticed working in basketball and we'd get we'd always have a couple of Americans that would be on the team and you know, those Americans would certainly a couple of times, I think they got the entire group. There was a lot of rolling of the eyes from the Australian players because that's not really their thing about praying to God before running out and participating. It's more of a private thing. But for the American, it needed to be a very, you know, public thing as a team. So a couple of times that happened. they can they can tap into some of those things.
And also, you know, there's a couple of rugby players face to face in, you know, what could be perceived as either aggressive stance or other. so there's, you know, there's dependency and measures dependency, positivity, passivity, passivity. I can't even think to say the word properly. Passivity. That's it. Passivity towards uncontrollable forces, I guess you could say, you know.
Apprehension over body contact, you know, jealousy, gloating, boasting, things like that. That particular image, the, it just reminded me of a story of the two rugby players. they're, they're one, you know, ones, they're both holding each other's shirt. Their faces are locked together front, you know, forehead to forehead. Like they're about to start something.
Generally, the stories that come out of that is, you know, there's some aggression there and they're about to fight. it reminds me of a story where I was using this when I was doing some recruitment to recruit, you know, for people in a a draft professional draft situation. And I wanted to it was probably early days when I was doing this and I really wanted to use some of the AAT images just to get away because some of the people that we talk to, know, they're mostly 17 years old. So in Australia, generally get drafted at 17 and go straight in and become a professional athlete immediately. There's no college system. Whereas quite different in America, where they generally go through the college system. So they're a little bit older when they get recruited professionally. But, you know, there's all sorts of, you know, quantitative testing that's done, but I wanted some information that was a little bit different. This was quite a while ago before the the league governing body put a put a stop on any anybody doing any psychological testing outside of what they decided was was right.
Cause it's quite strict now. I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. but we were, sitting in the room and there were the two senior recruiters that were with me, very football blokey blokes. And so, and, and I look back at it I'm, feel horrible still because I thought I should never have put that kid in that situation. This was a blunder as me, me as a professional, because, you know, this is probably something this kid, and I say kid because he was 17, wouldn't have experienced before saying, look, here's an image, can you tell me some story? And I thought I could go through these and look, get a little bit more insight. My job was to get an insight into character, potential behaviours, personality styles of these. So I could write up a report to say generally how this kid is and how they would fit into our club.
You know, how we'd be able to look after them. And so I wanted to do it by myself, but the recruiters were really keen to stay. They said, no, we'll sit here and be quiet. So I showed that this image and he looked at it for a long time and he just could, he was struggling anyway, and show him a couple of other images and he really didn't give me much. Subsequently, I stopped using these in that type of situation, but I just wanted to give it a go and see how it'd work. And I said, so, and he was struggling and I said, so can you identify with one character? And he said, well, I think that one on the left. and I was like, what, what is, what are the thoughts going through his head? You know, what are they, what's going on here? And he's, he said, well, I think that they're, you know, about to kiss. I was like, okay. And so, and so what's led up to this event? And, then one of the recruiters, I think just trying to, know, cause it was quiet and they're used to talking and a lot of action in recruiting meetings and completely inappropriately said, Oh, what are you gay to the 17 year old? And so, you know, there was a little bit of laughter, you know, from the kid. that was that was the end of it. I was incensed. Like, I just wanted to smash his face in for for saying that goes completely against everything that we do. That's why, again, I felt horrible as a professional because I'd failed miserably. I'd let, you know, an amateur into the room who couldn't uphold any type of professional standard there. But I think it's probably a good anecdote that I'm not saying that he was projecting his own unconscious onto that, you know, some might jump to that say, well, he's projecting himself onto that image. So, you know, he's high. He's a latent homosexual. And it's like, I'm not suggesting that at all. Because I think that'd be completely unfair to say that I think it was just an uncomfortableness of or trying to lighten the mood for the kid who is struggling to tell the story. But you know, as professionals, we know, when we ask questions, sometimes our clients don't have an answer.
And silence is one of the most beautiful, I mean, I love it in any type of work I do with people. love silence. Silence is fantastic. And it's really hard when you start working with clients in any setting to allow for silence, to allow people to sit and digest the question you've got. And so it can be tempting early days when you're working with clients, and particularly this test where you, where you think, this is uncomfortable. Haven't answered my question. They're just staring at the image. They don't know what to say. It's uncomfortable. I'll help them out by saying, let me, you know, are you seeing any type of interaction or relationship that kind of defeats the purpose? You know, a raw shot, somebody administering the raw shot would not jump in with it. Absolutely. I would hope.
You know, somebody staring at an inkblot and say, so, so what are you saying? You know, is it a butterfly or a spaceship or something? I mean, you don't want to give people those clues. It's got to come from them. In a way, in a way it goes back to original, you know, the Freudian idea of free association. That's really the core of all of this is, is you have a space now to talk. So when you're ready to talk, talk about whatever you want.
And I'm not going to, I'm not going to prompt you with anything. So when I saw my own analyst, as an example, you know, really pure, purest, I would walk in, there'd be no chit chat. No, like, how are you? How was the weather? How was your, your par phone parking? Okay. And there's no chit chat. You walk in, she would nod at me. I would sit down and she'd sit there. And it could be five minutes. It could be a couple of minutes.
If there's nothing, if she's not asking a question, she's not setting me up for anything. She's just allowing a space for me to talk and eventually I'll start talking about something. And that's the whole idea of free association is that whatever I've got to say is I'll say, but I don't need to be led in any way. so yeah, so that was just an example of, of that image. And, and, and maybe part of that is, you know, the, the, can be the difficulties of administering these techniques as well. So that young man's answer to what he saw, that's part of, you know, one of the variations of stories that tell. There's a couple of images where there's the tap into gay male or lesbian type of themes as well. So it's not just sports psychology, it's things that they tap into. So some people will relate what they see into relationships and it might be same sex relationships.
Mathias Alberton (22:49)
Of course, the story is quite incredible for different things. One is of course the the anecdote, if we want to call it as such, is it taps into the idea of the ethical boundaries of doing therapy, in which way, in which settings, for what purposes and so forth. For instance, this idea of using psychanalysis psychology tests, plural, in order to facilitate the recruitment. And that is something that is, cannot be done, at least anymore, if it was ever done previously. And it is understandable why that is the case, because then it is the problem of, let's say, if you use the Neo that I know that you like and you go for personality types by the big five. So introvert or agreeableness and so forth. Then you said, well, yeah, we have a team. It would be very nice to have an agreeable person here so that they can pair up with the others and create a more vibrant team. But that it is also something that, let's say, goes against selecting for the skills they have and the thing that they can bring along, regardless of what kind of person they are. Because otherwise, the selections start to be selecting different aspects of the person. And that is exactly what we are trying as, let's say, widely speaking, mankind to go against. We try to go forward. So it's not just to wash the whole thing with the idea of inclusivity, but it is the idea of not going against what we have gained as a society. So this is one aspect that I would like you to speak to me about, starting from that anecdote you have shared with us.
Petah M. Gibbs (25:17)
Yes, and because language is, language is vitally important in the sense of what our society defines words and how words are used in general, in our general culture, you know, depending on where you live and the makeup of the people in that area. So I think your example of the Neo is a fantastic example because you use, I use that a lot. More than a couple of thousand Neos with people. so the difficulty sharing that with lay people. So is exactly that people latch on to words. So the best example probably in the world for that when it comes to psychology is the word anxiety. know, some people will say don't even say the word anxiety because it will evoke anxiety in people and you know, don't say suicide because, know, there's a potential at money. Put that in someone's head and they might kill, kill themselves. Now that might be, we are socialized in the Western world. Definitely that, you know, anxiety is a bad thing. Depression is a bad thing. and they're really not, they're really not given the circumstance.
You know, anxiety is a very important part of who we are. We, we live in an anxiety, potentially anxiety provoking world. Everything we do from your alarm clock going up can be potentially anxiety provoking, you know, every single interaction and every single thing you do every day. and the anxiety and sadness, you know, sadness is another word that has this negative contest. Like that's a bad word.
And the sadness serves a purpose. don't know what it is to be happy unless we know what it is to be sad. Anxiety is particularly is perfectly fine as long as it's not negatively affecting a person's life. You know, so if they're anxious all day, every day for weeks and months, then yes, it may be there's an issue there and maybe there needs to be something looked at. But for somebody to have anxiety in a certain situation, you know, like a professional athlete having anxiety before they run out, that might be confused as to their level of arousal that they need to play with.
Mathias Alberton (27:52)
Yeah, also, you were talking and I was thinking about these negative, so to speak, traits or behaviors or appraisals of situations. I don't want to be too cheeky and go in a flight or fight mode. I don't want to be too binary in this selecting precisely one thing as opposed to another one.
But if we want to give the idea that life is also about, there is a lot in life that is about giving meaning to things, to situation, to relationship. It's more about the meaning that we combine with the reality we understand are surrounded with, rather than the purity of the word, because within you, as you said, one word, and then I combine it with the meaning that I agreed upon for my own imagination, but it's not shared across. And you were talking about lay people, but we could say that, for instance, one of the biggest contribution of the big five, to the world is not really to be extremely precise and efficient, but rather to create a shared language upon to have conversation on kind of personalities. So we can cross border with a common language when we talk about this personality traits. And I think this is extremely interesting.
Instead, when we're talking about something like the AAT, then we find ourselves in sticky situations, regardless the odd anecdote you were referring to. there is someone who doesn't belong to therapy, who is actually attending and then is misbehaving during, let's say, the session, although it was not exactly a psychoanalytic session per se. But that says a lot that there is an environment which is very important to be safeguarded. Also because the AAT for its own nature is less neutral in terms of language, because any language could apply to any image. And therefore the job of the therapist or the practitioner is also to be kind of ready to take whatever he comes in whatever moment he comes and to deal with it in a safe mode. Isn't that right?
Petah M. Gibbs (31:06)
Yes, absolutely. look, honestly, the easiest way to get around anybody, if you have a concern with a particular word that somebody's choosing to use, because, from a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic viewpoint, every word we use is a choice. People choose their words. And so if they use a word like anxiety, and for the therapist, they're ears prick up and they hear anxiety. Okay. Maybe some anxiety issues here. The best way to deal with that, of course, is to ask the client. So when you use the word anxiety, what does anxiety mean to you? And how do you define anxiety and what role does anxiety play in your life? And people might give you very different explanations of that.
So, know, exactly to your point, the word anxiety that they've chosen to use in response to an image or describing themselves through the main character. Because remember that, you know, theoretically, when a person's telling a story about what they see in the image, they're really talking about themselves. You know, they're projecting their own unconscious fantasies or ideas and stories onto this character, because that's what they're seeing. That's the whole idea. It's a projection. It's not an identification. That's a different ego mechanism. It's a projection. So there might be some identification going on, but essentially it's projection. And so it's important to really follow that up and get an answer to how they define that or could explain it further.
Mathias Alberton (32:55)
Without giving a ranking to psychology approaches. Absolutely, that's not the intent of my observation now, but actually we could specifically for sports psychology, as we know that is extremely focused on performance, for instance, and it is quite numerical, quantitative in nature. So that, let's say, primarily scales are used to measure tendency in behaviors in certain modes or modality or situations. So you can give it a 10, you can give it a five, you can give it a like it's character. And that this way of approaching, although it might be specific for sport, particularly efficient, it is also kind of provides a neutrality that is not sticky. So you don't get sticky with the client. You don't get sticky when you have to debrief with the parents of coaches. You don't get sticky because the most sticky things are not spoken, are not uttered. So you don't have yet to deal with them because you try to take them away from the equation with a kind of neutral test. For as limited as it might be, it can just do the job of measuring, for instance, I just mentioned one among hundreds, performance anxiety, because you just mentioned anxiety. So performance anxiety test is very commonly used, usually successful. It does the job.
He can divide in trait, state anxiety, and he also gives some idea of the level of self-esteem as contrasting the state anxiety. Isn't that pretty much the case? mean, something like the AAT being projective, it is all about be free to express, also be free to interpret.
Petah M. Gibbs (35:28)
Yes, absolutely. think your point's very well made there in essence, as far as testing goes. And that's why I said a couple of podcasts ago, you know, I'm a big believer and I think a lot of other people are too, that, you know, every test by itself, regardless of what theoretical approach it has or what it's trying to measure is limited.
We're asking a person that we don't know that well to answer a bunch of questions and using a forced choice response style or tell us a bunch of stories, things like that. There's limitations to all of them because we don't know how much truth, particularly in objective tests, know, questionnaires, we don't know how much truth there is in their responses, we're assuming they're telling the truth, but... That might not be the case. I've seen people fake good and fake bad. know, I've seen people, know, the particular club I work for is in a particular state. I've seen I've seen young athletes who don't want to be drafted to the club I work for because they don't want to leave home and fly across the country and set up a new lifestyle. so probably only a few times. But they they'll their test results are not great when you compare them to others. Their interviews are not great. I've had people not turn up at interviews a couple of times, giving giving every indication that like I'm a bit of a bit of a scallywag. So don't recruit me. You don't want me at your club. So there's there's rules against that, you know, of course. But so people can fake good and fake bad. But to answer your question, I always believe a battery of tests is the best thing you can do. Any test standalone as it is, maybe okay, but it can be as problematic as it is okay. If you're a hundred percent, because we get some people, maybe, I was going to say maybe young practitioners, but I think there's plenty of older practitioners out there that use their one scale, they've always got, and that's it, that's the answer. And I'll get the response results of that. And that's the answer. And there's no questions about it. I staked my reputation on it. That's really dangerous. So using a battery. So you've got all those tests, you might be measuring, you know, anxiety, state, trait anxieties, things like that. The use of an AAT, if you had questions about the results of the inventories that they filled out, then using an AAT may explore that further with a free response style. And it may allay any fears that you have. Actually, anything, any of the stories, nothing anxiety came out of there. So maybe there is an issue there. Or it may reinforce there's definitely, there's definitely anxieties going on there. That test picked up some anxiety and then the projective test that, that really showed that this person's really struggling with some competitive anxiety.
Mathias Alberton (39:02)
Going back to the, let's say, supplementary battery of images, the supplementary set of the AAT, I was wondering if, you know, we said you have a standard set, 10 images, the AAT roughly, I don't want to say prescribed, but suggest that you go through these 10 images. And then... As a practitioner you said, maybe next time we can dive into some aspect with the supplementary set. Maybe not even all of them, just a couple of them, just because I know that they elicit certain kind of topics more than others, which from the conversation throughout the 10 images appear to be more important. So let's dive in a bit more. This is one thing that I understood. Another thing is, I don't want to say in retrospective or when you were creating the supplementary images. Do you reckon that there are to date or the where to date? Any possible picture missing. Any, yes, actually this thing is something that we really didn't explore and we should have explored and it should be in the supplementary set and we didn't include it. Anything like that did occur at all.
Petah M. Gibbs (40:49)
Not that Mark and Daryl and I have discussed and the experts and the people, the feedback from practitioners have used it. From my knowledge, hasn't been anyone said, you know, it doesn't explore this particular issue at all. You know, we think it's fairly comprehensive, but others might disagree that use it. you know, it covers a huge, there's no test in the world.
And there never will be that we'll be able to measure and cover the entire human existence, the entire person. You just do the best you can. So it covers an enormous amount of different personal particulars and sports psychology themes. So I think as we've mentioned, you know, for each image in the manual, for each image, we say these are the sports psychology themes that this image tends to tap. So therefore, be aware that if you get fear of failure success, know, this person's talking a lot about this fear of failure, then you'll see, this image is intended, it generally intends to, well, it doesn't intend, it generally does exist.
Extract that from people. So most people that talk about that particular card, they will talk about fear of failure at some level or fear of success. Maybe going back to an earlier point very quickly, you mentioned about picking and choosing too. So this is another danger in our field where people have you know, specializing in this specific thing, you know, part of psychology, you know, so it can be easy to get clouded by that, you know, like, I mean, working with general people that, you know, any everyday people that come into a session and say, yeah, look, I'm, I'm depressed, anxious.
So I need help. that's their words, you know, that it's, it's not an open invitation to start treating depression and anxiety. You know, we, know, certainly with the internet, mean, you know, there'd be a huge number of clinicians that say, could, tell you a huge, enormous amount of stories where the clients walk in and they've already, already been diagnosed. Yeah. So, hi, I'm borderline personality disorder. have you been diagnosed with that?
No, but I've read enough about it. I've read the DSM-5 on the internet and I've done it all. So it's a self diagnosis. So therefore they're going, they've read the symptoms. They're going to start talking about the symptoms. you know, it takes skill to peel that back and make a proper diagnosis. And it might be borderline, it might very well not be. Again, with that example, we have athletes that will come in with that. Most athletes tend to know themselves reasonably well as far as their sport because that's their living for professionals or even amateurs or recreation. That's their obsession. So they know themselves pretty well. I've got real confidence issues. I've got real anxiety issues. I really struggle when performance is on the line, performance anxiety.
And so they've already, in a way, they've already self-diagnosed. So it's a matter of working through that. And it might get to the end. know, mean, God knows how many people I've worked with that have, you know, anxiety problems. in the end, they're not anxiety problems. They're a misunderstanding of arousal. Arousal is a very common thing. mean, it's, it's integral to, to performance. Everyone needs to know what, what their perf perfect arousal state is. So some people are, I know a couple of professionals that, you know, have played a few hundred professional games and they still vomit or feel sick almost every single game before they run out. And they're exceptional at what they do. Brilliant. But that is the state they need to be in. So a young player might say, wow, the best player on the team, the best player in the entire competition is vomiting before he runs out the door onto the field. know, wow, what's that about? Well, that player, that's his arousal state. He needs to play it. One particular person that has had that experience has said, you know, there's probably only two games I can think of where I didn't vomit or feel like I needed to vomit before a game. And they were the two worst games I ever played. My arousal levels were not where they need to be. So, you know, so some people think, I've got horrible anxiety issues. And through discussion and through working through it and defining it for them and them defining it for themselves, they might realize, no, it's not anxiety. It's simply I've got to learn what run arousal, maybe I'm a little bit too aroused before I go out and perform. So we've got to make sure also that practitioners don't pick out cards. It's like, I've got a client with the anxiety issues, so I'm going to pick the seven cards that may elicit anxiety themes. And then once I've looked at all the cards and all their stories, wow, guess what?
They've got anxiety issues. Well, of course, because you pick the seven cards that will elicit anxiety themes. And that's that's probably a ending statement as to why it's important to use the entire set and not to not to pick and choose and try and find what you want to find as a clinician.
Mathias Alberton (47:27)
So just to wrap it up, if you want to go for the supplementary set, your vision is that, well, you go for the supplementary set, all of it.
Petah M. Gibbs (47:42)
Yeah, well, yes, I mean, generally so. That's what I would recommend. If you've done 10, the original set, and then you thought this is, know, the client's really enjoying this. I'm really enjoying this. I think we're getting some really great stories. It's leading to a huge amount of questions that we can unpack in future sessions. And I think it's really beneficial. It'd be great. Let's do another five, you know, maybe at a later date.
We'll do another five, you know, the client, would you like to I've got some more images. Would you like to do another five images and explore that further? Absolutely. Rather, I think the danger of picking and choosing people again, people have their preferences and like, I like this card and this card and this card. That gives me really good answers. That's OK. But the danger of that, of course, is that you can be predetermining the type of responses that you're getting because those images are designed to elicit a particular types of responses generally. Hopefully that.
Mathias Alberton (48:47)
Also, by saying this, I remember when I have undertaken the test myself with Professor Anderson, and it is interesting to see or to experience that you might go into a card that elicits something particularly negative or discombobulating altogether.
And then by contrast, the following card is giving you some room to recover in a way so that actually the card that is not eliciting that particular aspect, at least for you, at least in that moment, provides you with some room to put yourself together or to have, let's say, an healthy balance. So you, change the, your own asset throughout the session. So you don't go under too much and
Petah M. Gibbs (49:53)
Yeah. I Mark's the, know, I think I've called him a genius on this before. I wouldn't call him that to his face, but he is amazingly good at what he does. And so, yeah, but look, he's he's put that in exactly the right terms. Yeah. There are some images that will elicit grief. And therefore you don't want to use just that one image because then you're not getting a really full picture of the person because they're being forced almost in a way to talk about grief. So we want to see that. However, if you show them the entire full 10 set and there is massive loss and grief, that is a theme through every story, like the man who's just won the race and got his hands up in the air and they're saying, yes, he's doing this for his family who all died on the weekend.
You know, where he's doing this for his dead dog. He's doing this. This person won the softball game for their dead parents. You know, then, then, then you've got some themes there. That's a thematic Apperception. You've got a theme of grief and loss and maybe death. And that's something then that you would take into your clinical work with the with the person, you start exploring some of that and unpacking that and that might be having a hindrance on their performance. If you know the reason they're there seeing you is because they believe they this may be something hindering them or they want to work on.
Mathias Alberton (51:31)
Petah, thank you very much for this super interesting conversation. We have much to talk still because there is, for instance, the children's set I'm very curious about. And it might be a good conversation to have another time. But I really want to confirm that it's super interesting to speak with you and to learn from you and to have insight about the AAT. Thank you very much for this.
Petah M. Gibbs (52:04)
Yep. Thanks again for your time. I love talking about it.
Mathias Alberton (52:09)
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