Analysis of human figure drawings is a psychological test. In 1926, Florence Goodenoff published measurement of intelligence by drawings. The child was asked to draw a person (DAP) and the drawing was scored for mental age. The scoring was done by adding up the points given for inclusion of parts, that is, head, arms, feet, fingers, etc. The Goodenoff DAP test quickly became an accepted widely used psychological test of intelligence. In 1948 Buck introduced the house, tree, person (HTP) technique. The child was asked to draw a house, a tree and a person and clinical interpretations of the drawings were made. Buck felt the test aided the clinician in obtaining information concerning the sensitivity, maturity, flexibility and degree of personality integration, through analysis of the person. The house and tree provide additional information concerning the growth and environmental feelings of the subject. The HTP was one of the first human figure drawings used as a psychological projective test. Karen Machover's book, Personality Projection in the Drawing of the Human Figure published in 1949, discussed some of the qualitative aspects related to psychopathology in human figure drawings. The rules of the aforementioned psychological tests use akinetic instructions. Children are asked to draw a person, or draw a house, tree, person, or draw a family. While useful information may be obtained, akinetic instructions, that is, non-moving instructions usually result in static, rigid, drawings. The approach of using kinetic, action instructions, that is, asking the child to produce a drawing where figures are moving or doing something, has been found to produce much more valid and dynamic material in the attempt to understand the psychopathology of children in a family setting. This chapter aims to improve our understanding of children by analysis of their kinetic family drawings, KFD. The child is asked to "draw a picture of everyone in your family, including you, doing something. Try to draw whole people, not cartoons or stick people. Remember make everyone doing something, some kind of action." Akinetic instructions yield relatively inert figures, the analysis of kinetic drawing focuses on the action or movement, rather than the inert figures.

Some Characteristics of Kinetic Family Drawings and Their Meanings:

COMPARTMENTALIZATION -- Children attempt to isolate themselves and their feelings from other family members through compartmentalizing. UNDERLINING--Drawing a line across the bottom of the page is characteristic of children from unstable families.

ACTIONS:

MOTHER -- COOKING -- This is the most frequent action of mother in KFD and reflects a mother figure that meets the child's nutritional needs. CLEANING -- This action is found in compulsive mothers who are more preoccupied with the house than with the people in the house. Cleaning becomes equated to acceptable or good behavior. IRONING -- Usually found in the overly involved mother, trying too hard to give her child warmth.

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