Tarot Cards as a Psychological Tool
by Tarot cards are just cards with symbolic pictures on them. They are not evil or satanic, and they could be used as a valuable psychological tool.
When we think of tarot cards, we generally think of psychics reading fortunes and predicting the future from the images on the cards. This use of tarot cards causes most people too think of the tarot as something mysterious, magical, or even satanic. But what if these same cards could be used to help us better understand our own subconscious minds?
Most of us disregard tarot as a silly waste of time, or worse, but they could have a practical application. Rather than paying some (most likely fraudulent) psychic to read your cards and predict your future, what if you could use your own deck to better understand yourself in the past and present to help you to make better choices for your future?
Tarot cards are simply pieces of paperboard with symbolic images printed on them. There is nothing inherently magical or evil about them. The pictures contained in modern decks reflect archetypal symbolism that is common throughout most cultures (at least western cultures). Because of the abstract and symbolic images, the meanings of each card can be left up to interpretation by the person doing the reading. As with dream interpretation, though there are common meanings to certain symbols, individual experiences and interpretations can make a certain symbol or card mean different things to different people.
A lot of tarot card readers claim that readings done for ones self don’t work, but when using tarot cards as a psychological tool, it is probably best to make your own interpretations about the cards.
It may also be beneficial for a therapist to interpret your interpretations of the cards as part of a therapy session. Though this would be extremely unorthodox in the field of psychology, this use of the cards is similar to ink blot tests in that the client’s interpretation of the cards can be used to get a glimpse into the inner-workings if their mind.
Tarot cards are just cards with symbolic pictures on them. They are not evil or satanic, and they could be used as a valuable psychological tool.
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Post Commentturbogeek
On December 12, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Really? Sure, I like the core that they are just pictures, but you may have a problem with basic science. Oh yeah, this is psychology… There is not a lot of science in psychology.
Anyway, here is the flaw: You can’t tie any response to a card to root causes. It is just sort of impossible. Worse still, the interpretation of the interpretation depends on the interpreting observers history and assumptions.
Let’s take the simple case, say the patient plops down the Death card… The patient’s interpretation is based on their life experience and pre-wired assumptions that were built on that experience. Their reaction will be based on too many to count, let alone trace to a single root cause for the interpretation. Their reading might be that they see change, death, loss, or even feel that the therapist is indoctrinating them into the devil’s science. Those interpretations are just what comes out, there is no way for sure to understand why.
On the other side, the interpreter, say a therapist, has their own assumptions pre-wired. Their life experience does the same thing to both their focus of observations and their interpretations. For example, if the patient is seeing loss, the therapist could believe their was a recent loss or assume the loss was related to childhood trauma. Or, as would be rather obvious, the idea of loss is just what they learned was the interpretation of the card.
The bottom line though is that there is no way to run an experiment. You know, that silly nerdy stuff called the Scientific Method. This is a problem with most psychology. Not that I place psychology into pseudoscience, but it will always be on the edge of full blown testable and provable science. There is just no way to get a repeatable and independently verifiable result.
Sure this could be a tool. But as a tool it is one of the worst. With a hammer and nail you can fairly accurately drive a nail into a piece of wood(given a little training of course). There is no way that Tarot could be used to any level of accuracy. It is more like a wet noodle with the nail driving itself from belief –poor metaphor, but I am a result of all my experience to this moment in time.
I guess the danger is in just one word you you used: Interpretation. The moment we ‘interpret’ we are on the slippery slope of pseudoscience and the danger of conclusions based on belief rather than reality.
Jennifer Marre
On December 12, 2010 at 11:25 pm
I didn’t mean do “readings” the way that you normally think of tarot readings, where the “psychic” is the one interpreting the cards from some memorized database of prescribed meanings. I simply meant to let the person interpret the card themselves. There are already similar therapy methods, in which the patient has to tell a story from looking at a photograph or determine what an inkblot looks like to them.