Rorschach Test

RORSCHACH TEST (Rorschach), a psychological method for investigating the "character of the subject's perceptions (not imagination, as is usually thought) as an associative comparison of what is present in the memory with directly given complexes of sensation" (Rorschach's own definition). The material consists of cards with blots of bizarre contours, with some of the cards having colored blots ("inkblots"). The subject is asked to name all the images that arise in their memory based on their similarity to the blots being viewed (the original Rorschach contains 10 cards). When evaluating the results, both the quantitative side of the associative process (speed of image emergence, their quantity) and the qualitative side (types of associative images) are taken into account. Many well-known psychologists (Binet and Henri, G. Dearborn, Kirkpatrick, Whipple) worked on developing the methodology, but complete uniformity has not been achieved. Rorschach himself notes how large the number of responses is, how long the reaction time is, and how often refusals occur; whether the responses are determined by the shape of the blots alone or also by the color of the blot and movement perceptions, whether the picture is grasped as a whole or in parts and in which ones, and finally, what exactly is noticed in the blots. E. Kretschmer considers the Rorschach method to stand on the border between experiment and observation and therefore to be insufficiently precise; however, in Kretschmer's opinion, with the help of the inkblot method, one can obtain rich material for characterological study, e.g., for separating schizothymic and cyclothymic temperaments. Thus, Kretschmer considers the Rorschach method to confirm his grouping and classification of characters. Rorschach himself points out that the most frequent responses based on form are animal figures; the percentage of animals decreases with developed imagination, while an increase in this percentage indicates stereotypy of thinking. In oligophrenics, references to parts of the human body are frequent. Abstract designations are frequent in schizophrenics. Responses in which color is significant are characteristic of representatives of impulsive, affectively labile types, and epileptics; the more stable the affects, the more responses based on form predominate, without paying attention to color. The phenomenon of "color shock" is significant: if it is sharply expressed, we have before us a neurotic who keeps their affect bottled up. The higher the intellectual productivity, the greater the number of responses involving movement. With an elevated mood, there are more of them than with a depressed one; flexion movements are characteristic of the depressed, and extension movements are characteristic of active, self-confident people. According to the methodology of Professor G. M. Whipple of Baltimore University, when processing the results of the experiment, the arithmetic mean number of various associations is calculated, as well as the average speed of each association. A detailed description of Prof. Whipple's methodology is available in his work (translated into Russian): "Manual for the Investigation of the Physical and Mental Activity of School-Age Children." A number of psychiatrists (Enke and others) used the Rorschach method for rapid preliminary outpatient diagnosis, for distinguishing types of temperament, and obtained very satisfactory results, subsequently confirmed by long-term clinical observation. For such preliminary, rapid diagnosis, the Rorschach method deserves great attention.