Ludmila D. Lebedeva

Projective drawing has long been a part of psychologist’ inventory. A word ‘flower’, wide in its lexical background, is of high regard in modern linguistics (O.A. Michailova, A.I. Molotkova). A flower is a polysemantic symbol with various meanings. Apart from personal associations, a flower has its symbolic attributions common to a culture. Flowers can ease and mediate interpersonal relationships serving as a metaphor for ‘male’ and ‘female’ symbols. Experimentally it was established that depicting a family as flowers in a drawing with subsequent verbalization could lead to spontaneous reflection of subconscious suppressed feelings. It has psychotherapeutic effect in diagnostic work even if it’s not intended, and could be carried out with children of 7 years of age and older. Research showed that type of flowers used in a drawing, their placement and environment reflect an actual situation in a subject’s family.