First published: Spring 2001
John Maizels: Where you did you train as a psychiatrist and what were your early influences?
Leo Navratil: I trained as a psychiatric specialist at the Gugging hospital, but I had one year’s experience in neurology at the Vienna Klinik and another year of internal medicine. I had a fellowship to spend half a year in London to study epilepsy in children. While I was there I came across a book titled Personality Projection in the Drawing of the Human Figure by the American psychologist Karen Machover and I was somewhat fascinated by a drawing test which was described as a diagnostic aid. When I returned to Gugging, I gave all my patients this test, and all my friends and relatives too; it was of great diagnostic value.
JM: Can you describe this test?
LN: I said ‘Please will you draw a human figure’ and I gave the patient a piece of white card the size of a post card and a pencil and then I gave them the task of making the drawing. It was especially interesting for my diagnostic work – much more than Karen Machover had ever described, and the different results of this test were fascinating.
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #34
