This test is built on the real method of Louis Corman (1964), derived from the Family Drawing technique proposed by Maurice Porot (1952). The difference comes down to one instruction: Porot asked people to "draw your family," while Corman asked them to "draw a family you imagine," leaving more room for unconscious tendencies to express themselves freely.
Corman's four planes
- Graphic plane: stroke strength, area of the page used.
- Structural plane: the relationships between characters.
- Content plane: who gets valued or devalued, and how.
- Underlying psychoanalytic interpretation.
This report focuses on the first three, the ones that connect to something measurable in your drawing.
How the report works
It uses 11 of these indicators: 4 are measured directly on the canvas (size, placement, thickness, shading) and 7 depend on you telling us what you drew (who you drew first, whether any character is bigger, whether you kept the parental figures together, animals, among others), since they require recognizing content. Alongside each one, decades of later research checking whether Corman's claims hold up.
A canvas drawn with a mouse will never capture the nuance of a real pencil stroke, but it does capture magnitudes (size, position, thickness), which is exactly what we measure. We're not claiming diagnostic precision, and neither does the original test.
Sources
- Corman, L. (1964). Le dessin de famille: test pour enfants. Presses Universitaires de France.
- Porot, M. (1952). Le dessin de la famille (contribution à l'étude des relations familiales du point de vue de l'enfant). Doctoral thesis, Université de Lyon.
- Handler, L., & Habenicht, D. (1994). The Kinetic Family Drawing Technique: A review of the literature. Journal of Personality Assessment, 62(3), 440-464.
- Klumpp, C. F. B., Vilar, M., Pereira, M., & Andrade, M. S. (2021). Study of discriminant validity evidence for the Kinetic Family Drawing. Avaliação Psicológica, 20(2), 241-252.
- Handler, L., & Reyher, J. (1965). Figure drawing anxiety indexes: A review of the literature. Journal of Projective Techniques and Personality Assessment, 29(3), 305-313.
All possible results
Your Family Drawing Report
Eleven real indicators from Corman's method, each one connected to what you drew: what he claimed about that specific value, and what the scientific evidence says today.
Read more about Your Family Drawing Report
Louis Corman published his method in 1964, building on Maurice Porot's Family Drawing. Decades of later research (Handler & Habenicht, 1994; Klumpp et al., 2021) find weak empirical support for most of his interpretive hypotheses. This report exists to show the real method, with the same rigor used to study it today, not to diagnose anything about you.
Frequently asked questions
Is this test a psychological diagnosis?
No, not under any circumstances. Even Corman's original test, applied by a trained clinician, isn't considered a reliable standalone diagnostic tool today. This report is informational: it shows the real method alongside the real scientific evidence about its validity.
How is this different from asking 'draw your family'?
Corman deliberately asked people to 'draw a family you imagine,' not their real family. He believed that ambiguity leaves more room for unconscious tendencies to express themselves, instead of limiting the drawing to a faithful portrait of the child's actual family.
Why doesn't any indicator have 'partial empirical support'?
Because, unlike other tests on this site where we do find a real exception (like the rounded torso or color in the human figure test), the most cited review of this family of techniques (Handler & Habenicht, 1994) doesn't identify any single family-drawing sign with consistent empirical support. We'd rather say that plainly than invent an exception that doesn't exist.
Can I retake the test?
Yes, as many times as you want. We don't save your drawing or your previous answers.
Is it free?
Yes, it's completely free: no sign-up or payment needed to take the test and see your result.
How long does the test take? How many questions does it have?
You draw your family, then answer 7 short questions about your drawing. About 4-5 minutes in total.