EDITOR'S NOTE: If you don't read the comments posted to Going40, you're missing half the fun. My readers carry on lively conversations, and today's guest post is a result of one such exchange. I asked BossofMe for today's contribution, in response to the comments of 11 November's posting. BossofMe's many abbreviations following her real name make her uniquely qualified to post to Going40.
Wow. What an honor it is to receive an invitation to be a Guest Blogger. Thanks to Muse and The Blogger. An opportunity to show off and tell people what I think, with no accountability. It doesn't get any better than that.
At this point, the Freudians in the audience should just move along to the next URL of interest, and avoid feeling compelled to refute my little lesson. You'll just aggravate yourselves needlessly if you keep reading here.
The Rorschach Test was invented in 1921 in Switzerland by a psychiatrist named Hermann Rorschach. (He died the next year of appendicitis at the age of 37. Think about that one, His Rock.) The test doesn't use just any old random inkblots—there are ten official cards, each with an inkblot on it, and they're always presented in the same manner, using the same language. The official cards haven't changed since 1921. They're about 6X9 inches. Five are black and white, two are black and white with some red, and three are quite colorful. It's considered a very secure test, and I had to have my credentials approved before I was allowed to buy a set of the cards. ($100) You probably won't find pictures of them on the Internet, and I can't tell you what I'm allowed to say when I present them.
If I ever did actually present them, which I don't.
The theoretical underpinning of the test is strongly Freudian, Jungian, psychoanalytic. They believed we are at the mercy of our unconscious drives and conflicts, and that we develop defense mechanisms to avoid the painful truths that are in the unconscious. An incomplete list of Freudian defense mechanisms includes denial, repression, regression, sublimation, rationalization, reaction formation, and projection.
The test is considered a "projective" test because it is said that we project our own stories and meaning onto the visual stimulus of the cards. After being shown the ambiguous visual stimulus of each card, the subject is asked to tell what they see. The specifics of the test experience are recorded in slavish detail. There are several systems of scoring and interpretation, each with a cultish following. There are answers that are common or frequently occurring, and answers that are quite infrequent. Those lists are pretty well-established.
It turns out, however, that the research underpinnings of the test are meager, and it all rests on a set of flawed (or possibly insane) assumptions.
In the last few years (10? 20? more?) the use of the Rorschach has become quite controversial. In fact, it's no longer considered appropriate for high-stakes diagnosis or in forensic or legal applications. I have pals who do a lot of psych testing, and some of them are still fond of it (and wistful for the olden days). They would say that projective tests still have some clinical utility, so I'm telling you that, just so I can pretend to be as fair and balanced as Fox News.
Is There Anything Else?
Yes. If you see the frog with four testicles, keep it to yourself.
ADDENDUM: Huh. At least for now, you can see the first card at Wikipedia, though it's in dispute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rorschach1.jpg
1 comment:
So it was probably bad of me to have printed off pictures of the cards -- which I found online at a Spanish site -- though perhaps not entirely unethical, since I have taken no vow to keep the super secret special codes.
I showed a few to my students, and let them say what they saw. No interpretation to follow, just a lot of laughter as they tried to entertain each other with clever and outrageous answers.
We connected their “revealing” responses to similar projections people make while looking at clouds, drawing random pictures, dreaming, or anthropomorphizing pets. (They thought I was making up that word, by the way).
And of course, we used our amateur psychiatric skills to analyze the main character
from “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It was pretty easy. While for the most part confined to a room, one with bars on the windows, she sees a woman creeping around behind the pattern of the room’s wallpaper. Hmmmm. In addition to her post-partum depression, could she feel “trapped”? By societal and cultural notions of gender roles and identity, perhaps? And as the shape is mute, does our lady feel incapable of communicating to her (discounting) doctor husband? DUH.
Thanks for the primer, Deb.
I’ll probably copy it off and pull it out in January when I teach psychoanalytical criticism. After my listing of major Freudian imagery, the class is usually of the “he’s insane, himself” bent. My feeble effort at “fair and balanced” in that case is usually to avoid comment, but stand in front of the overhead with a giant smirk on my face.
Ann
PS I saw no quadra-gonadded frog, but at a site for parents facing custody battles over their children (which recommended NOT submitting to a Rorschach test), it listed all the dirty images one should not see in order to appear healthy.
It made me think that…
a) at this point, the test is severely compromised, thanks to the web
b) like the old “don’t think of a bear” prompt, which causes people to pretty much only think of bears, finding out the sexually focused answers would cause one to only be able to see the hidden P-nesses and vajayjays.
c) the dude lying down? My students thought he was a giant riding a big wheel. THEY SHALL NEVER KNOW WHAT ELSE THAT BIG WHEEL COULD BE. At least not from me.
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