Dysharmonie d'évolution, abus sexuel et dessin : approche comparative chez l'enfant par la grille diagnostique de Van Hutton

The authors present Van Hutton's diagnostic scale “House-Tree-Person and Draw A Person as measures of abuse in children: a quantitative scoring system” (1994). This scale (HTP and DAP) was elaborated from a review of American research and from a comparative research conducted by Van Hutton using HTP and DAP test to diagnostic sexual abuse. A French translation of this scale has been realized and used to estimate its discriminative value in a French population of children. Increasing sexual abuses and complexity to establish diagnostic justify development of adapted instruments for evaluation in this field. Projective techniques like this scale, based on drawing production, bring a real contribution to perceive psychopathological signs expressed by children when confronted to a traumatism like sexual abuse. Methodological investigation has been realized, with the four scales of the Van Hutton scale: SRC (preoccupation with Sexually Relevant Concept), AH (Aggression-Hostility), WGA (Withdrawal and Guarded Accessibility) and ADST (Alertness for Danger Suspisciousness and lack of Trust). Comparison between three groups has been achieved: control group (39 French children without problems, 24 girls and 15 boys aged 5 to 12 years), abused children (Van Hutton population, 20 children, 15 girls and 5 boys aged 7 to 12 years), and psychopathological group (39 psychotic disharmonic French children, 29 boys and 10 girls, aged 5 to 12 years). Hypothesis were advanced in the way of significant differences between control and disharmonic children, compared to abused children, for each of the four scales. On an other way, no significant difference should be found between control group and disharmonic group concerning sexual abuse signs. In spite of reduced size of groups, results show interesting data, specially for SCR scale, which appears to discriminate very well abuse children from the others two groups. Significant differences are found for this scale, as waiting in the hypothesis, as well in total result than in sex-ratio comparison. But results obtained for the others scales (AH, WGA and ADST) show no significant differences between groups: psychological dimension explored by these scales are perhaps too general, not enough specific, to allow discrimination. At last, no significant difference has been found between control group and disharmonic group concerning sexual abuse signs, as waiting in our hypothesis. In conclusion, research presented here show pertinence of SRC scale of Van Hutton Diagnostic Scale, which differentiates productions of control and disharmonic children from those of sexual abused one. The authors point out the usefulness of the scale for a diagnostic and for preventive perspective, but also its actual limitations which implies further validation brought by study undertaken here. Further researches are suggested to set up validity on a largest way.