The Rorschach inkblot test

Ink stains forming mysterious symmetrical figures. These are the figures (or, rather, the non-figures) that are used in one of the most well-known projective tests: the Rorschach test.

It is a method born in the first half of the 20th century, when the psychoanalysis dominated Europe, and whose use has become popular both in personnel selection processes and even in the clinical setting. But... What ideas is the Rorschach test based on? How to use? Is it effective and reliable?

To answer these questions, we have to start by meeting the person who invented the inkblot test: the Swiss psychoanalyst. Hermann Rorschach.

Who was Hermann Rorschach?

Hermann Rorschach was born in Zurich in 1884, and from a young age he showed a great fondness for creating figures through the use of paint. After graduating in medicine he began specializing in psychiatry, and these studies made him enter fully into the world of psychoanalysis, which at that time was the psychological current that was becoming more popular in Europe.

In this way, Rorschach became very familiar with the concepts of free association and of projection, which at that time were used by Sigmund Freud and his followers in clinical practice. Rorschach was the first to use the term "psychodiagnosis" to refer to the interpretation of symptoms to discover mental disturbances that disturb the well-being of people.

But what Rorschach understood as psychodiagnosis was far from resembling a medical evaluation based on the observation of objective properties. For him, the diagnosis had to start from the interpretation of the way in which the unconscious of the patients manifests itself through their creations. Specifically, Rorschach focused on the interpretation of artistic works created by patients to try to understand the workings of his mind. This idea was the seed that later led to the creation of the inkblot-based Rorschach test.

The Rorschach test

In 1921, Rorschach published a book called Psychodiagnosis. This monograph presented for the first time a psychological test based on the interpretation of ten cards showing symmetrical ink stains. The curious thing about these plates was that the property that defined the figures that appeared in them was their total ambiguity.

The spots had no apparent meaning, and of course Rorschach had taken great care to prevent his creations from being clearly interpreted.

The stain test he had created emphasized total freedom in attributing meaning to these figures. It was a tool designed to be used in the diagnosis of psychological characteristics, but at the same time it fled from the possibility of measuring specific and well-typified responses that allow comparing the results obtained by different people.

Rorschach wanted everyone to be able to give whatever answer they wanted, and the range of answer possibilities was infinite, contrary to what happens in personality tests in which you have to select an answer from among several available. To understand the reason for this peculiarity, it is necessary to understand the value that is given to interpretation from psychoanalysis.

Interpreting spots

The idea that Rorschach relied on when proposing to create a system of psychological evaluation was totally related to the Freudian concept of the unconscious.

The unconscious was, for Freud, a side of the mind whose shape has been shaped by old traumas and irrepressible desires. Hypothetically, this psychic instance that directs our way of thinking and acting, even if we do not realize it, but it must always remain hidden from our consciousness. That is why the unconscious is constantly being repressed by psychic structures that fight so that it does not assault consciousness, and this continuous fight can generate psychopathologies.

However, Rorschach also knew the other side of the coin about the repression of the unconscious according to Freud. The creator of psychoanalysis believed that contents of the unconscious can emerge into consciousness and indirectly manifest themselves through symbolic disguises that, by hiding the true nature of what is to be repressed, do not endanger the stability of the consciousness. For example, he proposed the idea that dreams are symbolic manifestations of desires that must be repressed.

But this way of symbolically disguising elements of the unconscious does not occur only in dreams, but in many other dimensions of human activity. Rorschach concluded that a part of the unconscious can be projected in symbolic interpretations of what is seen, and therefore tried to create a psychological test in which people had to interpret totally ambiguous figures, without any apparent meaning. In this way, the way you interpret these totally meaningless forms would reveal hidden aspects of your mind.

The Rorchach test today

Rorschach died at just 37, months after publishing the book that would make him famous, and his symmetrical inkblot test soon began to gain popularity. It began to be used as a diagnostic tool for mental disorders, but its main use was as a personality test.

There came a point where it became so popular in the field of personnel selection that it was one of the most used tools in the world of Human Resources, and also entered the Forensic psychology to become an expert resource in judicial processes.

Even today the Rorschach inkblot test is widely used both in the judicial field and in companies, and the different Schools of the psychodynamic current have continued working to try to improve the interpretation criteria that the psychoanalyst began Swiss. In fact, much effort has been put into perfecting a system for interpreting the results of the Rorschach test, the best known being the Rorschach Comprehensive System driven in the 1960s by John E. Exner.

However, the popularity of the Rorschach spot test runs parallel to another fact to take into account: the Rorschach test does not have the validity or reliability that one would expect from a resource with good empirical bases. That is why the use of these spots to evaluate psychological characteristics is considered a pseudoscientific practice.

Criticisms of the Rorschach test

The first argument used to link the width test with pseudoscience refers to the paradigm epistemological on which psychoanalysis and Freudian theories that have given rise to the psychodynamic current of the psychology. This is because Rorschach's ideas about the unconscious cannot be tested or falsified: There is no clear way to rule out the possibility that a person has a childhood trauma or want to be protected by an authority figure, for example, because explanations about forces unconscious that move the person can always be modified on the fly without compromising hypotheses initials.

Similarly, if someone sees a unicorn in one of the Rorschach pictures, there are endless ways to justify that the person is very introverted, for example. This criticism, therefore, calls into question the validity of the theories on which the Rorschach test is based.

The second aspect of the criticism directed against the Rorschach test is of a more pragmatic nature and casts doubt on the usefulness of the test as a diagnostic or personality test tool. It points out that it is not a valid or reliable instrument and that through its use not many have been found robust correlations that allow establishing what type of responses reflect what type of trends psychological. The way in which the responses of the people who undergo the test are interpreted fails when it comes to reflect clear trends, and in general the conclusions reached are arbitrary or based on biases.

Conclusions

The Rorschach test is one of the most iconic and well-known inventions. He has appeared in series, novels, movies and even gives his name to one of the most famous comic book characters of the writer and screenwriter. Alan moore. It is also often understood as one of the resources that psychologists use to study personality. However, the fact that its theoretical foundations are so questioned greatly undermines its credibility as a diagnostic tool or psychotechnical test.

Bibliographic references:

• Gacono, C. B. and Evans, B. (2007). The Handbook of Forensic Rorschach Assessment (Personality and Clinical Psychology). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.

• Lilienfeld, S.O., Wood, J.M., Garb, H.N. (2000). The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 1 (2), pp. 27 - 66.

• Sutherland, S. (2013). Irrationality: the enemy within. London: Pinter & Martin.

• Wood, J. M., Nezworski, M. T., Lilienfeld, S. O., Garb, H. N. (2003). What's Wrong with the Rorschach?. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.