Loganathan and Sivakumar's Baum Test
- a new psychodiagnostic tool in depth psychology - Part 1
Mankind has been drawing pictures
long before they developed spoken and written languages. These drawings were
used to convey some sort of message and knowledge to the community and to the
future generations. This technique of passing messages and knowledge to be
carried forward to the next generation declined once language started
developing.
Nowadays drawings are used mainly
as an art and for leisure. In the field of psychology, drawings are still being
used to understand personality as they seem to convey messages that spoken
language or written language cannot do.
The earliest record of using drawings
in psychology can be traced to Emil Jucker who developed ‘Tree Drawing Test’
and Goodenough who developed ‘Draw a Man Test’. Since then, a few other picture
drawing tests were developed to understand human personality. Drawings have an
advantage compared to questionnaire kind of personality psychometric testing
because in questionnaire kind of tests, it will somehow be biased due to ego
interference of the individual.
It is quite well established now
that picture drawing is an important tool in psychodynamic therapists even
though it is not openly accepted. It is believed that through drawings, a
person will disclose elements of his own unconscious without any ego
interference. And by this disclosure, these elements are brought out to the
open for the therapist to help the person in his psychological problems.
As mentioned earlier, there are
many picture drawing techniques nowadays. We research focusses on tree test
also known as baum test. Emil Jucker came up with the tree test and it was
developed further by Charles Koch. This test involves drawing a single tree, with
the instruction ‘draw a tree’ or 'draw a tree bearing fruits'. This test is
used widely among psychologists, educationist and many others.
Why tree among so many other
objects to draw? According to Charles Koch, the tree symbolizes an outward
expression of the self which in humans is directed inwards. The tree is also
the closest symbol to the human body as it stands vertically, bears fruits and
flowers, grows and flourishes much like the human body. Therefore when a person
draws a tree, it is actually his outward expression of his unconscious. But the
drawings need to be interpreted to truly understand the person’s metaphorical
and mythical ways of thinking, his unconscious.
There wasn’t much development in
the baum test since its introduction in the 1920’s. In 1987, Ullaganar, a
psychology lecturer in University Science Malaysia, experimented by changing
the instructions for the baum test and he introduced the technique of drawing
four trees instead of only one as in the standard baum test. Each tree will
have a different instruction. The idea of having one instruction for each tree
came from an ancient Tamil text called Tirumanthiram , written by Tirumoolar in
the 6th century. Subsequent research by Ullaganar and his associate Sivakumar
has proven that through this new tree test, the unconscious of a person can be
accessed in depth. Their research has also shown the tremendous potential of
this test. We find it to be a powerful psychodiagnostic tool in exploring the
unconscious of a person. Having realized
the potential, in 2015 this test was copyrighted and it is now
officially called ‘Loganathan and Sivakumar’s Baum Test’, in
short LSBT.
The LSBT, compared to other
projective tests goes much deeper than any other projective tests available
today. We find that through these unique instruction for each tree, it somehow
reaches the unconscious layers of the human mind in which the metaphorical and
mythical ways of thinking of the person are disclosed. We also find that
through LSBT, the historical understanding of a person will also be disclosed.
What is even more exciting is that the archetypes can also be captured through
this test, especially in the third and fourth tree.
We feel that this test is a
breakthrough in the field of psychology and through the years of experimenting,
we are amazed at the amount of information that we can obtain about not only a
person’s mental health but also his physical health. We are developing this
science of interpreting the drawings as ‘hermeneutic semiotics’ to distinguish
it from other related fields.
Ullaganar and Sivakumar have linked
this science with the ancient Tamil psychology system, a further development of
the ancient Tamil psychology system of Siddha medicine.
Ari Marappan
Ullaganar Agamic Sciences Center Sdn Bhd
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