Card 1. [A young boy is contemplating a violin that rests on a table in front of him.]
This picture has a long history of use as a TAT card. It was used in the first series of cards where it was referred to as Picture 5 (Morgan & Murray, 1935, p. 302) or Picture No. 12 (Morgan, 1936). In the "Series B" (Rapaport, Gill, & Shafer, 1946; White, Sanford, Murray & Bellak, 1941), "Series C" (Clark, 1944), and "Series D" (Murray, 1943/1971) cards it was referred to as Card 1.
In the current test manual Murray informs the reader that the picture is one of the "old standbys" and a "Drawing by Christiana D. Morgan" (Murray, 1971, p. 18). Although this is true as far as it goes, the credit by Murray does not tell the whole story. The drawing is actually a close copy of a photograph of the young violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, by the New York photographer, Samuel Lumiere. Reproductions of the photograph can be seen in an autobiography of Moshe Menuhin, Yehudi's father (Menuhin, 1984) and in Menuhin & Davis (1979). The photograph had also appeared much earlier in various magazine and news reports concerning the young prodigy (Jahnke & Morgan, 1997). It is one of these reports that I believe must have been used as the original source for Card 1.
The identity of the boy depicted in Card 1 has been recognized for quite some time. Stein (1955) provided a hint in one of the sample stories that he presents in his manual. In it a female subject ends her story with the question, "Was it deliberately made to look like Yehudi Menuhin?" (p. 3). Later Holt (1978) identified the picture as a "Drawing by Christiana D. Morgan, after a photograph of Yehudi Menuhin as a child" (p. 80).
When I wrote Lord Menuhin to ask him about the picture he was kind enough to reply with his own TAT story:
Actually, I was gazing in my usual state of being half absent in my own world and half in the present. I have usually been able to "retire" in this way. I was also thinking that my life was tied up with the instrument and would I do it justice? (Yehudi Menuhin, personal communication, 31 October, 1993).
Additional details regarding the violin and Yehudi's age at the time the photograph was made can be found in Jahnke & Morgan (1997), and details about Samuel Lumiere, the photographer, can be found on the Broadway Photographs website.
Holt, R. R. (1978). A normative guide to the use of the TAT cards. In Methods in clinical psychology: Vol. 1. Projective assessment (pp. 77-122). New York: Plenum Press.
Jahnke, J., & Morgan, W. G. (1997). A true TAT story (pp. 376-379). In W. G. Bringmann, H. E. Lück, R. Miller & C. E. Early (Eds.), A pictorial history of psychology. Carol Stream, IL: Quintessence Publishing.
Morgan, C. D. (1936). Claustrum article. Henry A. Murray Papers, Harvard University Archives, HUGFP 97.43.2, Box 7 of 7, Folder: T.A.T.: Christiana Morgan, "Claustrum Article."
Morgan, C. D., & Murray, H. A. (1935). A method for investigating fantasies: The Thematic Apperception Test. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 34, 298-306.
Murray, H. A. (1971). Thematic apperception test: Manual. Cambridge, NA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1943).
Rapaport, D., Gill, M., & Shafer, R. (1946). Diagnostic psychological testing (Vol. 2). Chicago: Year Book Publishers.
Stein, M. I. (1955). The Thematic Apperception Test: An introductory manual for its clinical use with adults (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
White, R. W., Sanford, R. N., Murray, H. A., & Bellak, L. (1941, September). Morgan-Murray Thematic Apperception Test: Manual of directions. [Mimeograph]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Psychological Clinic. (Harvard University Archives, HUGFP 97.43.2, Box 5 of 7)
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