In the technical literature we often found the theory, that the ability of drawings of psychiatric patients would regress to the level of children. In our experiment we examined the question, whether testpersons would be able to distinguish between drawings of children and drawings of psychiatric patients. We formed 16 pairs of illustrations, each pair consisting of a drawing of a child and a psychiatric patient. The drawings of each pair had equal characteristics. These pairs was shown three groups of testpersons, one had experience with children, an other with art and the third one neither with children nor with art. The correct distinctions were more frequent than we could expect on the supposition, that drawings of psychiatric patients are equal to drawings of children. Also there was no significant difference between the judging-groups. Based on this results, we reject the theory of regression.