6.3 Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) & House-Tree-Person (HTP)

Theoretical Evolution of the Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD)

The Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) was developed in 1970 by clinical psychologists Robert C. Burns and S. Harvard Kaufman. Prior to the KFD, traditional projective family drawing techniques (such as those developed by Maurice Porot and Louis Corman) instructed children simply to "Draw your family." Burns and Kaufman observed that static family drawings frequently elicited rigid, conventionalized portraits—neat rows of smiling figures holding hands—that reflected conscious social desirability and defensive masking rather than authentic systemic dynamics.

To penetrate these defenses, Burns and Kaufman introduced a single, profound modification: adding the instruction of action ("kinetic"). Requiring every family member to be depicted doing something transforms the drawing into an active psychological stage. Action mobilizes dynamic unconscious material, compelling the drawer to reveal:

• Implicit family hierarchies and power distributions
• Alliances, dyads, triads, and emotional triangulation
• Interpersonal boundaries, enmeshment, and disengagement
• Covert hostility, competition, anxiety, and emotional isolation

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KFD Standardized Administration Protocol

Materials and Setup

• Paper: One sheet of standard 8.5" x 11" white drawing paper (presented horizontally in landscape orientation).
• Drawing Media: A standard No. 2 lead pencil with an eraser. While some art therapists utilize colored pencils or markers in modified expressive protocols, the standardized Burns and Kaufman scoring criteria are normed on lead pencil drawings.
• Environment: A quiet, private room with a flat table free from visual distractions.

The Standardized Directive

The clinician places the paper and pencil in front of the client and delivers the exact verbal prompt:

"Draw a picture of everyone in your family, including you, DOING something. Try to draw whole people, not cartoons or stick figures. Remember to make everyone doing something—some kind of action."

Observational Tracking

The clinician notes drawing behaviors without offering suggestions: the order in which figures are drawn (who is drawn first vs. last), figure omissions, physical hesitation or resistance, drawing latency, erasing behaviors, and spontaneous verbal commentary.

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Standardized KFD Scoring Dimensions

Burns and Kaufman established a comprehensive scoring framework organized into four primary interpretive categories:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     KFD SCORING & ANALYSIS DOMAINS                     │
├───────────────────┬───────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. Actions        │ 2. Styles         │ 3. Symbols & Characteristics   │
├───────────────────┼───────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Interpersonal   │ • Compartment-    │ • Affective Symbols (Sun, Rain)│
│ • Isolated        │   alization       │ • Physical Proximity/Distance  │
│ • Energetic Level │ • Lining at Bottom│ • Relative Scale & Size        │
│ • Directionality  │ • Encapsulation   │ • Figure Omissions (Self/Other)│
└───────────────────┴───────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘

1. Actions

• Interpersonal Actions vs. Isolated Activities: Evaluates whether family members are engaged in reciprocal, interactive activities (e.g., cooking dinner together, playing catch, conversing around a table) or isolated in parallel tasks (e.g., father watching TV alone in another room, mother working on computer with back turned, child playing video games isolated in corner).
• Energetic Investment: Assesses whether actions are vigorous and purposeful (cooking, building, running) or passive and lethargic (sleeping, sitting motionless, lying down).
• Directionality of Movement: Identifies whether actions move toward connection, avoidance, competition, or overt aggression (e.g., a sibling throwing objects at another figure).

2. Styles (Defensive Graphic Maneuvers)

Styles represent graphic mechanisms deployed to manage intense family conflict, anxiety, or emotional vulnerability:

• Compartmentalization: The drawer utilizes actual structural lines, grid lines, separate room boxes, or geometric frames to isolate family members from one another. Compartmentalization represents a rigid psychological defense against overwhelming conflict, uncontained anger, or intolerable family tension.
• Lining at the Bottom: Drawing a heavy, deliberate, reinforced baseline across the bottom edge of the paper before placing figures upon it. This signifies heightened anxiety, insecurity, and a desperate compensatory search for stability and emotional grounding.
• Under-lining: Drawing individual separate lines underneath specific individual figures (e.g., a line under the father or under the self), isolating that figure's base of support.
• Encapsulation: Enclosing one or more family members within an enclosed physical object or boundary (e.g., a child drawing themselves inside a bubble, locked bedroom, car, or fenced enclosure). Encapsulation reflects profound feelings of alienation, ostracism, or an attempt to protect a vulnerable self from external family threat.
• Folding and Edge-Lining: Utilizing paper folds or drawing figures clinging to the extreme perimeter edges of the sheet, reflecting avoidance of central family interaction.

3. Symbols

Recurrent graphic motifs carrying systemic and affective significance:

• The Sun: Symbolizes parental warmth, life energy, or authority. A bright, smiling sun positioned directly above a child suggests positive parental support; an immense, scorching, blackened, or stern-faced sun suggests oppressive, hypervigilant parental control or suffocating authority.
• Rain, Dark Clouds, and Water: Reflect depressive affect, emotional distress, turbulence, or an atmosphere of perceived family gloom.
• Fire and Heat Sources: (Stoves, fireplaces, burning grills): Represent intense emotional warmth, domestic conflict, or volatile anger within the household.
• Barriers: Physical objects (large dining tables, television sets, walls, pianos, computer screens) placed deliberately between figures, visually blocking interpersonal contact.

4. Characteristics of Figures

• Physical Proximity and Distance: The spatial distance between figures directly mirrors the drawer's perception of emotional closeness or detachment. Figures drawn touching or close together indicate emotional intimacy; figures banished to distant corners signify alienation.
• Relative Scale and Height: Reflects perceived power, dominance, and authority. An oversized parent dominating the page signifies overwhelming dominance; a tiny, shrunken self-figure reflects feelings of worthlessness, powerlessness, or insignificance.
• Omission of the Self: The drawer draws the family but omits themselves entirely. This is a critical clinical indicator signaling profound alienation, perceived non-belonging, rejection by the family system, or severe identity diffusion.
• Omission of Specific Family Members: Excluding a parent or sibling reflects intense repressed hostility, denial, jealousy, or unresolved trauma regarding that individual.
• Body Orientation: Figures facing forward indicate direct availability; figures drawn in profile indicate guardedness; figures drawn with their backs turned indicate active rejection or emotional withdrawal.

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Kinetic School Drawing (KSD)

Prout and Phillips introduced the Kinetic School Drawing (KSD) in 1974 — later integrated with the KFD by Knoff and Prout as the Kinetic Drawing System: Family and School (1985) — to assess a child's academic and social adaptation within the educational environment. The standardized directive instructs:

"Draw a picture of you, your teacher, and a friend or two DOING something at school. Try to draw whole people, not cartoons or stick figures."

Clinical Applications of the KSD

• Teacher-Student Relationship: Proximity to the teacher, relative size of the teacher, and teacher orientation (supportive guide vs. authoritarian threat).
• Peer Socialization and School Refusal: Evaluates whether the child depicts themselves engaged in collaborative play, academic participation, or isolated on the playground periphery.
• Academic Self-Efficacy: Illuminates anxieties surrounding learning disabilities, testing performance, bullying, and institutional containment.

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The House-Tree-Person (HTP) Projective Technique

Developed in 1948 by American psychologist John N. Buck and subsequently refined by Emmanuel Hammer, the House-Tree-Person (HTP) is one of the foundational projective drawing techniques in clinical psychology and art therapy. Buck conceptualized the HTP as a three-part visual battery that systematically explores conscious and unconscious layers of personality functioning.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     THE THREE HTP ARCHETYPES                           │
├───────────────────┬───────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┤
│ THE HOUSE         │ THE TREE          │ THE PERSON                     │
├───────────────────┼───────────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Domestic Reality│ • Unconscious Ego │ • Conscious Self-Image         │
│ • Family Dynamics │ • Somatic Vitality│ • Interpersonal Contact        │
│ • Reality Access  │ • Trauma Scars    │ • Bodily Integrity            │
└───────────────────┴───────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘

The Two-Phase Administration Protocol

Phase 1: Freehand Drawing Phase

• Standard Format: The client is provided with a standard No. 2 pencil with eraser and three separate sheets of 8.5" x 11" white bond paper (or in modified protocols, a single large sheet). The clinician administers the three drawings sequentially:
  1. "Draw a house." (Paper presented horizontally)
  2. "Draw a tree." (Paper presented vertically)
  3. "Draw a person." (Paper presented vertically)
• Achromatic vs. Chromatic Administration: Buck originally designed a two-stage administration: an initial achromatic phase (lead pencil) followed by a chromatic phase utilizing a 16-color crayon or pastel set. The comparison between achromatic and chromatic renderings reveals how the client manages emotional arousal and affective stimulation.

Phase 2: Post-Drawing Interrogation (PDI)

The HTP is never complete without the Post-Drawing Interrogation (PDI)—a structured, clinical interview querying the client's subjective associations, emotional narrative, and projected feelings for each entity. The PDI prevents arbitrary clinician projection and grounds interpretation in the client's own verbal framework.

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Symbolic Architecture of the HTP

While avoiding rigid sign-approach interpretation, art therapists evaluate the structural and archetypal dimensions of the three entities:

1. The House: Domestic Reality and Accessibility

The House represents the client's relationship to home, domestic life, family relations, and ego boundaries:

• Roof: Represents the intellectual and fantasy life. An exaggerated, oversized roof dominating the structure suggests excessive reliance on fantasy, intellectualization, and daydreaming as defenses against anxiety. An absent or flat roof indicates emotional constriction and concrete, impoverished thinking.
• Walls: Symbolize ego strength and personality integration. Firm, continuous lines reflect resilient ego boundaries; thin, faint, or tremulous lines suggest ego fragility and vulnerability to decompensation; heavily reinforced, double-traced walls indicate hypervigilance and rigid defensive shielding.
• Doors and Windows: Mediate contact with external reality and interpersonal accessibility. Accessible doors and open windows with curtains reflect healthy social receptivity. Missing doors, doors positioned high above ground without steps, barred/shuttered windows, or heavily padlocked doors signify extreme interpersonal guardedness, paranoia, withdrawal, or trauma-induced hyper-defensiveness.
• Chimney and Smoke: Reflect warmth, domestic atmosphere, and instinctual drives. Soft, gentle smoke indicates domestic comfort; dense, black, billowing smoke erupting from the chimney reflects intense domestic conflict, unresolved familial hostility, or pent-up internal rage.

2. The Tree: Unconscious Self-Concept and Ego Vitality

The Tree is the deepest projective element in the HTP, reflecting unconscious ego vitality, developmental growth, instinctual grounding, and traumatic history:

• Trunk: Represents core ego strength, inner stability, and somatic integrity. A sturdy, well-proportioned trunk indicates psychological resilience. A narrow, constricted trunk suggests emotional depletion. A trunk that splits in two indicates severe internal conflict, ambivalence, or dissociative fragmentation.
• Trauma Scars and Knotholes: Darkened knotholes, peeling bark, gouged cavities, or severed limbs on the trunk frequently correlate with specific traumatic events in the client's developmental history. In the Koch Baum-Tree trauma index, the vertical height of a knothole on the trunk corresponds chronologically to the developmental age at which trauma occurred (relative to the tree's total height representing current age).
• Roots: Represent grounding in physical reality, instinctual drives, and psychological foundation. Balanced roots extending into the earth indicate healthy reality testing. Prominent roots visible beneath transparent soil ("X-ray roots") signify severe cognitive regression, reality impairment, or primitive anxiety. Absence of roots or groundline suggests ungroundedness and floating vulnerability.
• Branches and Crown: Represent environmental outreach, interpersonal capacity, and aspiration. Reaching, well-balanced branches indicate healthy social engagement. Club-like, spiked, or dagger-shaped branches suggest aggressive acting-out impulses. Severed, broken, or dead branches indicate trauma, profound loss, or depressive withdrawal.

3. The Person: Conscious Self-Image and Social Identity

The Person represents the client's conscious body image, somatic integrity, and interpersonal functioning:

• Facial Features: Mediate sensory contact with the social world. A blank face with omitted features signifies social withdrawal and avoidance. Piercing, exaggerated eyes indicate paranoid hypervigilance.
• Arms and Hands: The primary instruments of environmental manipulation, contact, and action. Arms extended outward reflect social reaching and desire for connection. Arms crossed tightly over the chest or hidden behind the back suggest defensiveness, guilt, or impulse inhibition. Spiked fingers or talon-like hands reflect hostile aggressive impulses.
• Legs and Feet: Reflect autonomy, locomotion, and independent stability. Tiny or absent feet indicate insecurity and perceived lack of self-support.

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The Post-Drawing Interrogation (PDI) Protocol

Buck formulated a standardized 60-question Post-Drawing Interrogation form to explore the client's internal projections during the PDI. Core clinical inquiry sequences include:

House Inquiry Sample Questions

• "How many stories does this house have?"
• "What is this house made of?"
• "Is it a happy house? What makes it happy (or unhappy)?"
• "Who lives in this house? Do you know them?"
• "If you owned this house, what room would you choose for yourself?"
• "What does this house need the most?"

Tree Inquiry Sample Questions

• "What kind of tree is this?"
• "How old is the tree?"
• "Is the tree alive or dead? What makes you say that?"
• "If it is dead, what caused it to die? When did it die?"
• "Is any part of the tree sick or damaged? What happened to it?"
• "What does this tree need most of all?"

Person Inquiry Sample Questions

• "Who is this person? How old are they?"
• "What is this person doing right now, and where are they?"
• "What is this person thinking and feeling?"
• "What kind of person are they? What do they worry about?"
• "What does this person need most in the world?"

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The Fallacy of the "Sign Approach" in Art Therapy Assessment

A paramount competency tested on the ATCBE is the ethical and clinical distinction between formal structural assessment and the reductionist "sign approach" (cookbook interpretation).

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     ETHICAL ASSESSMENT HIERARCHY                       │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  1. Formal Structural Rating (FEATS / Cohen DDS Rating Guide)          │
│  2. Client-Generated Narrative & Inquiry (PDI / Verbal Dialogue)       │
│  3. Developmental Appropriateness (Lowenfeld Graphic Norms)           │
│  4. Cultural & Environmental Context (Values, Visual Traditions)       │
│  5. Convergence with Full Biopsychosocial Battery (History & MSE)      │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  CRITICAL VIOLATION: Diagnosing Trauma or Psychopathology Based        │
│  Exclusively on an Isolated Graphic Sign (e.g., Tree Knothole)         │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why the Isolated Sign Approach Fails

1. High False-Positive Rates: Empirical studies show that isolated graphic indicators (such as drawing a knothole on a tree, omitting hands on a figure, or drawing blackened windows) occur with high frequency in healthy, non-clinical populations.
2. Developmental Confounding: Graphic markers that indicate pathology in an adult (such as transparent "X-ray" drawings or baseline lining) are developmentally normative in young children traversing Lowenfeld's schematic and preschematic stages.
3. Cultural Relativity: Symbolic meanings vary across cultural backgrounds. In some cultures, drawing figures without individual facial features reflects modesty or stylistic convention rather than psychological withdrawal.
4. Ethical Mandate: ATCB and AATA ethical standards prohibit art therapists from diagnosing psychopathology or making definitive forensic assertions based solely on graphic artifacts. Assessment findings must be synthesized with clinical history, structured inquiry, behavioral observation, and standardized psychological testing.

Master Comparison Matrix: Standardized Art-Based Assessment Instruments

The following synthesis matrix compares the four primary standardized art therapy assessment instruments tested on the ATCBE board examination: