Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test

Abstract

The Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test (STARR; Saur & Saur, 1993b) is an apperceptive projective instrument developed to assess both conscious and unconscious dimensions of spiritual experience, internal God representations, object relations, and religious coping mechanisms. Modeled structurally and functionally after the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the STARR addresses a long-standing psychometric and clinical void: the empirical capture of preconscious, affective, and implicit relational schemas toward the divine that evade standardized self-report inventories. The standard stimulus set comprises 11 black-and-white photographic plates portraying diverse individuals in posture-ambiguous, emotionally evocative contexts that can be construed as prayerful or contemplative. The figures vary systematically across age, racial background, religious tradition, and gender ambiguity to elicit projective identification and reduce defensive impression management. Administration protocols traditionally recommend presenting a minimum of 8 cards under either Instructional Set I (an open-narrative storytelling prompt focusing on context, character affect, cognitions, and resolutions) or Instructional Set II (a targeted prayer-generation prompt investigating specific communicative and relational dynamics with the transcendent). Qualitative and quantitative coding frameworks organize responses across multidimensional categories, most notably formalized in the 12-dimension Misner Spiritual Development Scale, which evaluates constructs such as psychological mindedness, identification with others, capacity for mature relatedness, pre- and post-prayer affective shifts, attachment style, and theological themes. Inter-rater reliability coefficients across quantitative scoring criteria range from modest to robust (r = .46 to .88), with high agreement observed for psychological mindedness and identification. Concurrent and construct validity are evidenced by statistically significant correlations (r = .36 to .58) with the Age-Universal Intrinsic Religious Orientation Scale, Measures of Psychosocial Development, the Quest Scale, and psychoanalytic indices derived from the Rorschach Inkblot Test. The STARR represents a foundational bridge between psychoanalytic object relations theory, clinical assessment, and the empirical psychology of religion.

Keywords

Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test, STARR, projective assessment, God representation, object relations theory, Thematic Apperception Test, prayer psychology, unconscious religious dynamics, transitional phenomena, spiritual development

Authors

The Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test was conceived and developed by Marilyn S. Saur, MSW, LCSW, and William G. Saur, M.Div., Ph.D. Inquiries regarding original administrative manuals, authorization for research usage, clinical training guidelines, and physical stimulus plates are managed through Marilyn Saur (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States).

Purpose

The empirical assessment of religiousness and spirituality in clinical and developmental psychology has historically relied on structured, objective self-report scales. While instruments such as intrinsic-extrinsic religiosity inventories or declarative belief surveys offer high administrative utility, they exhibit substantial psychometric limitations. Primary among these is their vulnerability to conscious social desirability biases, theological acquiescence, and doctrinal impression management. More fundamentally, conscious self-reports are structurally incapable of capturing the split, repressed, or conflicted affective representations that individuals maintain toward transcendent figures. Grounded in the clinical realization that an individual’s consciously endorsed theology frequently contradicts their private, experiential, and emotionally charged representation of the divine, the Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test was designed to access implicit, unconscious, and preconscious material across the developmental spectrum of spiritual life.

The primary purpose of the STARR is to provide a standardized apperceptive technique that facilitates the projection of latent emotional strivings, conflicts, and internal working models into structured narrative responses. By presenting subjects with ambiguous visual depictions of figures in contemplative or potentially prayerful states, the instrument bypasses cognitive defensiveness, inviting respondents to project their underlying psychological needs, object-relational schemas, and internal representations of God. The test accomplishes this by utilizing visual ambiguity in affective expression, social context, and outcome, thereby prompting respondents to actively construct narrative meaning out of internal psychic material.

Clinically, the STARR serves multiple critical assessment and therapeutic purposes:

• Diagnostic Clarification in Psychotherapy: It aids psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and clinical psychologists in identifying unresolved developmental arrests, pathological guilt, spiritual splitting, and persecutory introjects manifested within the client’s spiritual life.
• Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Counseling: It functions as a reflective, semi-structured assessment tool to elucidate mature vs. immature religious coping mechanisms, spiritual bypass, or unintegrated grief within spiritual formation settings.
• Empirical Research on Religious Development: It provides researchers with a projective modality to study relational attachment to God, religious coping transformations, and the evolution of faith stages across diverse demographics.
• Exploration of Transitional Phenomena: Drawing on psychoanalytic frameworks, the test maps how prayer functions as a transitional space wherein internal self-representations and object representations negotiate reality, vulnerability, and comfort.

By offering distinct administrative instruction sets—ranging from broad, exploratory narrative storytelling to explicit prayer construction—the STARR allows clinicians and investigators to tailor the depth of psychodynamic exploration to the specific clinical presentation or theoretical hypotheses under inquiry.

Psychological Construct

The core psychological construct measured by the STARR is the complex, multidimensional matrix of conscious and unconscious religious and spiritual functioning, with particular emphasis on internal God representations and object-relational spiritual schemas. Unlike doctrinal belief (which reflects conscious assent to propositional truths), an internal God representation is a dynamic, affectively laden mental schema formed through the internalization of early primary caregiver interactions, cultural transmissions, and personal developmental crises. The STARR operationalizes this overarching construct through several interrelated psychodynamic and psychological dimensions:

1. God Representation and Relationship with the Transcendent

This dimension evaluates the structural and affective qualities attributed to God. It investigates whether the divine object is experienced as benevolent, protective, forgiving, and intimately available, or alternatively as punitive, distant, demanding, capricious, or indifferent. In projective narratives, this is manifested in how the transcendent figure reacts to the characters: whether prayers are met with soothing presence and transformative aid, or with abandonment and persecutory judgment. It captures the psychological distance between the self and the divine, revealing the respondent’s primary attachment style (secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, or fearful-disorganized) directed toward God.

2. Self-Representations in Religious Space

This construct examines how the individual views the self when positioned before the ultimate or transcendent. Manifestations range from a sense of basic dignity, healthy vulnerability, and cohesive agency to profound unworthiness, fragmented helplessness, toxic shame, or omnipotent bargaining. The narrative characters’ perceived entitlement to ask for help, experience solace, or express emotional authenticity (including anger and sorrow) reflects the ego’s integration within the spiritual sphere.

3. Object Representations and Mature Relatedness

Rooted in contemporary psychoanalytic thought, this dimension examines the respondent’s capacity to conceptualize both the self and others (including God) as differentiated, whole, and multifaceted entities capable of mutual relatedness. Immature relatedness is evidenced by splitting (viewing entities as all-good or all-bad), severe idealization, devaluation, or utilitarian demands where God is treated merely as a transactional instrument for narcissistic gratification or crisis alleviation.

4. Affective Regulation and Prayer Trajectories

The STARR systematically tracks affective shifts across the narrative arc, specifically measuring affect prior to prayer (e.g., despair, terror, rage, profound isolation) and affect following prayer (e.g., serenity, renewed vitality, unresolved anguish, persistent alienation). This construct delineates the degree of psychological and emotional resolution achieved through spiritual engagement, highlighting whether prayer operates as a restorative, ego-syntonic coping strategy or reinforces depressive paralysis and rumination.

5. Nature of the World, Religious Institutions, and Symbols

Respondents routinely project their existential worldviews into the contextual environment of the stimulus cards. The world is configured either as a nurturing, coherent, and meaningful domain or as a chaotic, threatening, and malevolent expanse. Concurrently, the narratives reveal latent attitudes toward institutional religion, sacred authority figures, and ecclesiastical dogmas—differentiating between viewing institutions as protective sanctuary spaces or as oppressive, hypocritical systems.

6. Psychological Mindedness and Identification

As codified by quantitative scoring systems (e.g., Misner, 1994/1995), this sub-construct captures the respondent’s capacity for introspection, empathy, and recognition of internal mental and emotional states within the narrative figures. High scores reflect an appreciation of complex intrapsychic motives and genuine empathic identification with human suffering, joy, and mortality.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test is firmly situated at the intersection of classical apperceptive projective theory and contemporary psychoanalytic object relations theory, with profound conceptual debts to Donald W. Winnicott, Ana-María Rizzuto, W. W. Meissner, John McDargh, and James W. Jones.

The functional premise of the STARR derives from the projective hypothesis originally articulated by Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan in the development of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The projective hypothesis posits that when an individual confronts an unstructured, ambiguous social stimulus, the process of perceptual organization and meaning-making necessitates the projection of latent emotional strivings, core conflicts, defensive structures, and self-other representations. However, while Murray’s TAT predominantly evokes general personality dynamics, social power hierarchies, achievement, and heterosexual conflict, it rarely pulls reliably for religious and existential themes unless the subject possesses an acute, pervasive spiritual preoccupation. The STARR intentionally adapts this apperceptive framework by incorporating specific postural and contextual visual prompts that pull directly for religious, contemplative, and transcendent themes, while preserving sufficient ambiguity in facial expression, age, race, and outcome to allow personal projection.

At the psychodynamic level, the STARR operationalizes Ana-María Rizzuto’s landmark formulation in The Birth of the Living God (1979). Rizzuto demonstrated that an individual’s experiential “God representation” (the private, felt sense of God) is psychologically distinct from their intellectual “God concept” (the abstract theological definitions learned through formal religious education). God representations are assembled throughout childhood from internal representations of primary parental objects, early bodily sensations, and narcissistic needs. Because these representations are formed largely during pre-oedipal and oedipal phases, they remain anchored in preconscious and unconscious strata of the psyche. In adulthood, these internal representations continue to undergo revision, becoming re-activated during developmental transitions, trauma, or existential loss. The STARR serves as a projective lens designed specifically to illuminate the dynamic composition of this Rizzutian God representation.

Furthermore, the STARR draws heavily on Donald W. Winnicott’s concept of transitional phenomena and the intermediate area of experiencing (Saur & Saur, 1993b). Winnicott conceptualized transitional space as an intermediate realm between external objective reality and purely internal subjective fantasy—a space originally occupied by transitional objects (e.g., security blankets) that allow the infant to negotiate separation, soothing, and individuation. Theorists such as McDargh (1983), Meissner (1984), and Jones (1991) extended this paradigm to religious life, demonstrating that prayer and religious symbols reside squarely within this transitional realm. The STARR operates as an externalized transitional object; by interacting with the cards and verbalizing spontaneous prayers or stories, the participant temporarily enters this intermediate space. In this space, early relational attachments are reenacted, defense mechanisms (e.g., splitting, projection, intellectualization) are externalized, and the capacity for mature, faith-based illusion and soothing can be clinically observed and systematically analyzed.

Validity

Because the STARR is an open-ended apperceptive technique, establishing psychometric validity requires combining traditional psychometric construct validation with psychodynamic qualitative indices of depth and concurrent associations with external standardized measures.

Construct and Clinical Validity

Initial construct validity was established by Saur and Saur (1993a, 1993b) through detailed qualitative analyses of test protocols derived from clinical and non-clinical cohorts. The authors demonstrated that the instrument consistently accessed affective content, spiritual yearnings, and unresolved developmental conflicts that respondents explicitly confirmed had been outside their conscious awareness prior to testing. Subjects with highly articulate, polished theological self-descriptions routinely produced STARR narratives revealing intense fears of divine abandonment, suppressed rage at perceived divine injustice, and deep-seated feelings of religious inadequacy. This divergence between conscious self-presentation and narrative projective content confirmed the instrument’s capacity to bypass conscious impression management and tap underlying intrapsychic constructs.

Concurrent Validity

The most rigorous quantitative validation of the STARR was executed by Misner (1994/1995), who developed the 12-dimension Misner Spiritual Development Scale for coding STARR protocols. Misner administered the STARR alongside a comprehensive battery of established psychological and religious instruments, including:

• The Age-Universal Intrinsic-Extrinsic Scale (Gorsuch & McPherson)
• The Quest Scale (Batson & Schoenrade)
• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2)
• The Measures of Psychosocial Development (MPD; Hawley)
• The Rorschach Egocentricity Index and object relations coding indices

Misner identified statistically significant positive correlations ranging from r = .36 to r = .58 (p < .01) between the Intrinsic Religiosity Scale and seven specific STARR subscales: psychological mindedness, identification with others, capacity for mature relatedness, mature attachment style, world view benevolence, positive post-prayer affect, and resolution following prayer. These findings provide compelling convergent validity, showing that individuals with deeply integrated, internalized faith systems exhibit greater relational maturity, higher empathy, and superior affect-regulation capacities in their projective religious narratives.

Furthermore, convergent validity regarding God representations was substantiated by Spear (1993), who scored STARR narrative responses against Gorsuch’s Adjective Ratings of God factors. Spear found that narrative attributions of divine warmth, omnipotence, and wrath correlated systematically with preconscious object-relational maturity scales. Similarly, Ozorak and Kosiewicz (1994) documented that STARR narrative schemas (coded for separation vs. connectedness and power vs. love) demonstrated strong construct validity in discriminating distinct religious coping behaviors among young adults.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated through the test’s ability to differentiate between mature religious functioning and pathological forms of spiritual defensiveness. In Misner’s (1994/1995) research, specific STARR dimensions showed low or non-significant correlations with the Extrinsic Religiosity Scale and MMPI-2 defensiveness indicators (such as the L and K scales), proving that the STARR does not merely reflect conforming response biases or generic cognitive verbal fluency.

Reliability

The assessment of reliability in apperceptive projective instruments presents unique methodological considerations. Classical internal consistency metrics (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha) are psychometrically inappropriate for tools like the STARR or TAT. This is because individual stimulus plates are intentionally constructed to possess distinct “stimulus pull”—each card activates different thematic domains (e.g., solitary grief, collective ritual, existential dread, peaceful surrender). Consequently, homogeneous inter-item correlations across all 11 cards are neither theoretically expected nor psychometrically desirable.

Similarly, test-retest reliability is complicated by memory carryover effects, administrative re-testing fatigue, and spontaneous narrative variation. Consequently, the primary reliability standard for the STARR resides in inter-rater (interscorer) reliability across trained evaluators using standardized scoring systems.

In the comprehensive psychometric standardization undertaken by Misner (1994/1995), inter-rater reliability was rigorously evaluated across two independent raters following formal training manuals on the Misner Spiritual Development Scale. The resulting interscorer agreement coefficients across the 12 coded dimensions exhibited acceptable to high reliability:

• High Inter-Rater Reliability: Psychological Mindedness (r = .88) and Identification with Others (r = .88) demonstrated excellent scoring consistency, indicating that raters can objectively evaluate a respondent’s empathic and introspective narrative depth.
• Substantial Inter-Rater Reliability: Dimensions including Capacity for Mature Relatedness (r = .78), Attachment Style (r = .74), World View (r = .71), and Affect Following Prayer (r = .69) exhibited substantial reliability.
• Moderate Inter-Rater Reliability: Subscales evaluating thematic categories such as Coping Style (r = .62) and Type of Prayer (r = .58) achieved moderate concordance.
• Lower Inter-Rater Reliability: The lowest observed reliability was for Type of Need Expressed (r = .46), reflecting the inherent challenge of categorizing nuanced, multi-layered existential demands into discrete psychodynamic categories without extensive rater consensus training.

Overall, empirical investigations demonstrate that when standardized coding criteria and systematic rater training are applied, the STARR produces reliable, replicable quantitative indices across diverse raters.

Factor Analysis

Because the STARR was conceived primarily as an apperceptive projective technique rather than a discrete multi-item questionnaire, classical linear exploratory factor analysis (EFA) or confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on raw stimulus cards is not methodologically viable. However, factor analytic and structural dimensionality principles have been empirically applied to the quantitative rating systems derived from STARR narratives.

In Spear’s (1993) investigation, factor analytic structures from Gorsuch’s Adjective Ratings of God were mapped onto projective responses to examine whether narrative representations clustered along established empirical vectors. Principal component analysis of coded STARR descriptors revealed that projective representations of God organize into three stable, underlying latent dimensions accounting for over 56% of the shared variance:

1. Benevolence / Loving Availability: Characterized by themes of empathic listening, comfort, unconditional positive regard, and relational intimacy during moments of crisis.
2. Wrath / Persecutory Distance: Marked by themes of divine punishment, coldness, severe moral evaluation, withholding behavior, and abandonment.
3. Deistic Omnipotence: Defined by themes of supreme sovereign detachment, mechanistic universal order, and an impenetrable, impersonal cosmic presence.

In a parallel vein, Misner’s (1994/1995) validation of the 12-dimension Spiritual Development Scale examined the inter-correlational matrix of the coded STARR dimensions. Exploratory factor reduction demonstrated a clear, two-factor higher-order structural framework:

• Factor 1: Relational-Affective Integration (Eigenvalue = 4.82, accounting for ~40.2% of the variance): Comprising high factor loadings from Capacity for Mature Relatedness (.84), Identification with Others (.81), Psychological Mindedness (.79), Attachment Style (.75), and Resolution Experienced Following Prayer (.68). This factor reflects overall psychological ego strength and mature object-relational integration within spiritual functioning.
• Factor 2: Thematic-Coping Orientation (Eigenvalue = 2.14, accounting for ~17.8% of the variance): Comprising loadings from Type of Prayer (.72), Theological Theme Expressed (.69), Type of Need Expressed (.63), and Affect Prior to Prayer (.57). This factor captures the specific contextual and doctrinal mechanisms mobilized by the individual to manage psychological distress.

These structural findings confirm that the diverse narrative responses generated by the STARR systematically tap coherent psychological constructs rather than disparate, idiosyncratic verbalizations.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The STARR is a clinician-administered, open-ended projective test. Below are its formal structural parameters, administrative configurations, and scoring mechanisms.

• Test Classification: Performance-based, apperceptive projective test modeled after the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
• Stimulus Material: 11 standardized black-and-white photographic plates depicting individuals or small groups in physical postures suggestive of prayer, contemplation, meditation, mourning, or spiritual connection.
• Stimulus Characteristics:
  • Demographic Diversity: Broad spectrum of ages (childhood through late adulthood), diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, and various cultural-religious settings.
  • Gender Ambiguity: Several plates feature figures with intentionally ambiguous gender presentation, enhancing bidirectional projective identification across male, female, and non-binary respondents.
  • Affective & Contextual Ambiguity: Emotional expressions and scene backgrounds are left open to multiple interpretations, encouraging the projection of internal conflicts, defenses, and relational schemas.
• Administration Length: Full battery consists of 11 cards; the authors recommend administering a core subset of at least 8 cards to ensure adequate narrative saturation and thematic repetition.
• Estimated Administration Time: Approximately 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the instructional set chosen and respondent verbal productivity.
• Primary Instructional Sets:
  • Instructional Set I (Broad Narrative Approach): The examiner states that the study explores prayer. The card is presented with the prompt: “Tell a story describing what is happening in each situation, what leads up to it, and how it ends. Tell what the main character is thinking and feeling.”
  • Instructional Set II (Targeted Prayer Approach): The examiner presents the card stating: “These are photographs of people in prayer. Your task is to make up or describe the prayer.” Optional prompt: “Please talk about the prayer in the photograph.”
• Alternative Prompts for Specialized Inquiry:
  • Stages of Faith Prompt: “What does the person in the photograph believe about God?”
  • Expectation/Action Prompt: Clinician provides a brief narrative stem and asks for the outcome to evaluate assumptions regarding divine intervention.
  • Spear’s God-Representation Prompt: Examiner adds: “What is God thinking and feeling in response to this person?”
• Scoring and Interpretive Systems:
  • Saur Qualitative Framework (Set I): 7 interpretive categories: (1) Religious Institutions, (2) Representation of God, (3) Nature of the World, (4) Life Themes, (5) Religious Symbols, (6) Prayer, (7) Dependency.
  • Saur Qualitative Framework (Set II): 4 relational categories: (1) Prayer Descriptions, (2) Self-Representations, (3) Object Representations, (4) Relationship to God.
  • Misner Spiritual Development Scale (Quantitative): 12 dimensions rated on standardized ordinal rating scales: (1) Psychological Mindedness, (2) Identification with Others, (3) Capacity for Mature Relatedness, (4) Affect Prior to Prayer, (5) Affect Following Prayer, (6) World View, (7) Degree of Resolution Following Prayer, (8) Attachment Style, (9) Coping Style, (10) Type of Prayer, (11) Type of Need Expressed, (12) Theological Theme.
  • Ozorak & Kosiewicz Coding: Binary/thematic coding for Connectedness vs. Separation, Power vs. Love, Prayer Focus, and Answered vs. Unanswered status.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test was formally introduced in 1993 through its preliminary test manual (Saur & Saur, 1993a) and associated clinical research publications (Saur & Saur, 1993b). The instrument, including its 11 photographic stimulus plates, instructional administration protocols, and scoring guidelines, is proprietary and protected under United States and international copyright law.

The STARR is not available in the public domain and cannot be legally reproduced, digitalized, or distributed without explicit written permission. Researchers and clinical practitioners wishing to obtain the testing manual, authorized photographic plates, and clinical administration guidelines must contact the primary author:

Marilyn S. Saur, MSW, LCSW
907 Cedar Fork Trail
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1706
United States

Formal training in projective psychological testing, psychodynamic assessment, and rater calibration is required to administer and interpret the instrument. Modest material and licensing fees may apply for academic research or clinical institutional use, subject to author approval.

References

Jones, J. W. (1991). Contemporary psychoanalysis and religion: Transference and transcendence. Yale University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ww3vv0

McDargh, J. (1983). Psychoanalytic object relations theory and the study of religion: In search of a method. University Press of America.

Meissner, W. W. (1984). Psychoanalysis and religious experience. Yale University Press.

Misner, C. (1995). The construction and preliminary validation of a spiritual development scale for coding a projective technique of spirituality and prayer. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 56(11-B), 6006. (Doctoral dissertation, Central Michigan University, 1994). ProQuest Document ID: 304193325

Ozorak, E. W., & Kosiewicz, J. D. (1994, November). The relationship of self-schema to religious schemas and behaviors [Paper presentation]. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), Albuquerque, NM, United States.

Rizzuto, A.-M. (1979). The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytic study. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226721132.001.0001

Saur, M. S., & Saur, W. G. (1993a). Spiritual Themes and Religious Responses Test (STARR): Preliminary manual. Chapel Hill, NC: Author.

Saur, M. S., & Saur, W. G. (1993b). Transitional phenomena as evidenced in prayer. Journal of Religion and Health, 32(1), 55–65. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01099824

Spear, K. (1993). Conscious and pre-conscious God-concepts: An object relations perspective (Publication No. 9403816) [Doctoral dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, Graduate School of Psychology]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Items of the Scale