The projective assessment helps one to understand the personality of persons depending on how they express themselves; how they speak, sit down, maintain eye contact, their temperaments, their ego and many other traits that define people’s behavior. The projective assessment “Draw a House” is a reflective diagram of a person’s behavior and it can be used to understand people especially when they are seeking counseling. The structure of the house represents a person’s social life, behaviors and attitude and also portrays their maladaptive behaviors. In brief, I have found that the roof of the house represents the degree of a person’s fantasy in his or her life. The roof is a presentation of the extent to which people want to make social networks, in other words, the size of social networks. A bigger roof shows that the individual likes to meet many people and a smaller roof shows that the individual has a small social network. In interpretation of the person’s behavior, it can mean it is likely that a person exhibiting a smaller roof is not social, and may be an introvert who keeps emotions to herself. When counseling such a person, it can be recommendable that she engages in social groups or associate with people that she trusts so that they can help her to deal with personal problems that she may not want to share with others.

I have also come up with a different understanding of the house sketch. Windows for example, we know that it provides a view what are happening outside; people’s activities and adventures, but at the same time, barring others from knowing that you are watching them. In a personality perspective, windows can mean trust; there are those who are open-minded and would presser to share a lot that happens in their lives with friends and others just prefer to be secretive, many windows shows that the person is likely to be vulnerable (easily taken advantage of for trusting people too much with her person issues). It can result in the person being abused easily. People who are vulnerable should be advised not to trust other easily as this can destroy their lives especially in relationships. A house with no windows is a person’s weakness of being shy; not wanting to share her feelings and this can lead to loneliness. If there is a garage in the house, this can show that the person leads a secret life, the presence of a fence represents the need for protection. If the house has shadows, the individual could be living in two lives-split personalities. Shadows represent people who live a life of disguise; the normal life that people know and a secret life that they do not want to be known and will do anything to hide it especially from families.

The projective assessment and the Jungian typology tests have some similarities. After doing the Jungian test, I found my personality fell under ENFJ and NF psyche which shows that my dominant character was having an extraverted feeling. Same with the house sketch; I drew many windows because I had a tendency to give closure to other issues and in particular, those that I care about in an intense, personable and warm manner. Another similarity related to letter “E” which confirms my aspect of wanting to listen to others before I speak. I prefer not to speak so that I learn their concerns and when I have unconfirmed and volatile issues, I give space to my friends and I do not rush just to be heard (Engler, 2013). In the “Draw a House” sketch, I included a few windows to provide my tendency to express my trust to others with prudence so that they can also confide in me. The only different I have found in the two tests is that the projective assessment is flexible; it depends on the different meanings you may want to attach to the drawing to define a person’s character while Jungian test provides only a one-way analysis. It produces an aggregate description of personality (Engler, 2013).

References

Engler, B. (2013). Personality theories. Natorp Boulevard: Cengage Learning