Chapter VI
THE CHILD'S FEELING OF SECURITY
OF MAIN importance in the preschool child's personality is his
degree of security and balance. The feeling of security is
largely determined from without; it is an environmental factor.
Balance^ as we shall discuss later, is largely determined from within
and seems to be a structural factor. A child's feeling of security or
Insecurity indicates whether he feels happy or unhappy, whether
he is isolated or sociable, whether he behaves actively or passively.
The child's feeling of security is connected with his emotional sta-
bility or instability^88'S49'400'402)
EVALUATION OF THE HOME SITUATION FROM
CHILDREN'S DRAWINGS
The child's feeling of security is to a large degree dependent on
his home situation. Since the preschool child cannot be easily ap-
proached by methods of questionnaires and of associations, and
since spontaneous reactions appear more freely in graphic expres-
sion, we used the following test for evaluating the child's home sit-
uation from his drawings. The child was asked to draw his family.
The characteristic points of observation in the child's drawing of
his family were;
L The order in which the child draws the members of his fam-
ily, the spatial arrangement of the figures, and whether the child
omits a certain member of Ms family,
2. The difference of proportions and of forms used for the
representations.
'Concerning the order and arrangement of figures, it is signifi-
cant whether the child starts to draw father or mother, whether he1'
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