The Rorschach Inkblot Test

many, the word Rorschach is quite unknown and to others it is simply known as the inkblot test and even then, the real meaning of the Rorschach test is never acknowledged. The Rorschach inkblot test is a psychological projective test of personality in which a subject's interpretation of ten standard abstract designs are analyzed as measure of emotional and intellectual functioning and combination. Also, like other projective techniques, "it is based on the principle that subjects viewing neutral, ambiguous stimuli will project their own personalities onto them, thereby revealing a variety of unconscious conflicts and motivations." (Aronow; p 25)

This test, which is administered to both adolescents and adults, can also be used with children as young as three years old. The test provides information about a person's thought process, perceptions, motivations and attitude toward his or her environment. It can also detect internal and external pressures and conflicts as well as illogical or psychotic thought patterns. There is a lot of confusion on the actual first creator and/or founder of this famous test.

The Rorschach was named after a Swiss psychiatrist named Hermann Rorschach. He was born in 1884 in Zurich and died in 1922 due to complications with appendicitis. He was the original developer of the inkblots, but he did not use them for personality analysis like they are used today. Throughout his lifetime, Hermann took a deep interest in psychoanalysis, and during the early 1900's he published several psychoanalytic articles. It was just in 1911 that he had begun experimenting with the interpretation of ink blots as a mean of determining introversion and extroversion. Although some people would think he was the first to do so, Rorschach was not the first one to study ink blots; among his famous forerunners of the inkblots are Leonardo da Vinci and Jusinus Kerner.

In 1921 the first edition was actually published by Ernest Bircher. The test appeared under the name of a book called Psychodiagnostik, which had actually been first written by Hermann Rorschach in 1919 but he had problems finding a publisher so it was not well received when it first came out. Since 1927 Hans Huber has been the publisher of the Rorschach test and the related book Psychodiagnostics (English version) "Hans Huber was an employee with Ernst Bircher and it turned out that Dr. Rorschach and Hans Huber spent many sessions together perfecting the construction and actual printing." (Aronow; p 38)

The test consists of 10 cards in total. Five of these cards are in black and white; the remaining five are in color. The examiner puts the cards in the subject's hands right side up. The examiner later asks the subject to look at the cards carefully and describe what each inkblot resembles to them. The instructions are then given to the subject though they are kept vague for a purpose. This enables the subject to make associations from the form, shading, texture and color of the blots. Moreover, the subject can respond to each blot in its entirety, to major portions of the blot or 'large details,' to small details in the blot's structure; subjects are also free to make use of the white spaces surrounding the blot or within it. After being the cards in a certain manner, the subject is also free to rotate the cards from the positions in which they are presented (right side up) and even to turn cards over and look at the back of them. After the subject gives a response, the examiner asks him or her to explain what was seen in the images. The examiner goes back over the responses and may ask the subject to clarify some responses or to describe which features of each inkblot prompted the responses. The subject is unaware of this but the examiner is making notations on things such as how much time is used to describe each card, if the subject covers a section of the card or even rotates the card.

The theory behind the test could be seen differently depending on the examiner.

"The world contains ambiguity; people respond to the ambiguity in habitual ways, and the more ambiguous the situation in which they find themselves the more important these habitual response styles become. An inkblot, being the ultimate of ambiguity, should be an ideal way to "tap into" such habitual responses." (Dawes; p 105)

Moreover, the contents that each individual states that they see can give an example of what is on their mind at the time, or past experiences. The inkblots are "free to be projected into the stimulus situation, because it in fact they have no structure of its own." (Dawes; p 106), keeping in mind that the test is a projective test. There is also a theory that there is empirical and clinical evidence that human perception of movement in Rorschach inkblots