The Projective Use of the Bender-Gestalt Test

Abstract

As currently employed, the Bender-Gestalt Test consists of nine geometric figures, each of which is presented on a card about the size of the usual index card. Although there have been a number of modifications of these figures, two sets of cards, one prepared by Bender and the other by Hutt (see below), are the ones currently in widest use. These simple materials, the ease and rapidity of their administration, and the increasingly rich clinical and research evidence which have become available, have made this instrument very popular among clinicians. In general, two different, but complementary, approaches have been employed in the use of the test: 1) as a device to assess disturbance in the perceptual-motoric aspects of behavior, usually with some objective measure of the severity of this disturbance; and 2) as a projective technique to assess various aspects of personality functioning, sometimes with objective scores, sometimes with single or configurational indices, and sometimes with careful, clinical evaluation of all aspects of test behavior as well as test performance.