CHILDRENS DRAWINGS

Children's drawings have been used in clinical interviews to provide direction for recollection and memory of events. Drawings encourage the retrieval of experience in the motoric, visual, and auditory recall. The drawing itself gives an expression of motor sensory discharge; the objects in the drawing help with the perceptual cues that are remembered; the cognitive dimensions are represented in the organization, interpersonal patterns, and verbal discussion of the picture. The premise of this paper is that children's drawings are useful as an associative tool for assessing and accessing traumatic memories.