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THE RORSCHACH METHOD IN THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY
Author(s) -
HarrowerErickson M. R.
Publication year - 1943
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1943.tb52773.x
Subject(s) - rorschach test , citation , relation (database) , personality , psychology , library science , psychoanalysis , computer science , social psychology , data mining
Although I have spent perhaps the best part of my waking life during the past five years mulling over some problem connected with the Rorschach method, I still remember keenly my first reaction to the test. It was one of incredulity and disbelief. Just as Naaman, the king in the Old Testament story, refused to believe that anything as simple as bathing in the River of Jordan could cure him of his disease, so I refused to believe that the task I had been set, to look a t ink blots, could provide the examiner with far-reaching information about personality in general, and my own in particular! And when this examiner, a friend of many years, looking over my responses, remarked: “Ah! How little I knew you”-this seemed to add insult to injury. Any of you who are hearing about the Rorschach method for the first time are entitled, therefore, to just such a reaction of incredulity! On the other hand, those of you who are well informed as to the intricacies that lie behind the simple facade of the test, who are experts in your own right, must bear with me while I make the necessary introductions. In 1921, Hermann Rorschach,l a Swiss psychiatrist pointed out that if you showed people a series of ink-blot pictures (like the 10 he had devised after many years experimenting) you would find that they all saw in these meaningless blotches a multitude of diverse objectsthe blots, or parts of the blots would “look like” things to them. Your learned academic friends, the old janitor, the patients in the State Hospital,, all would have meaningful experiences when looking a t these calculatedly meaningless blotches. Moreover, Rorschach explained, this meaning, mental organization or sense which was given by the individual to the non-sense, was never the result of chance but was directly related to his ways of acting, his patterns of behavior, his personality. The Rorschach test, therefore, consists in the subject describing to the examiner what he sees in the blots and the examiner writing down these responses, the finished product being the Rorschach record. Unlike previous investigators who have worked with ink blots, and