The Rorschach
Test
The Projective
Hypothesis
Responses to ambiguous stimuli
will reveal aspects of
personality including drives,
motives, defenses, emotional
style, and cognitive processes.
Advantages of
Projective Tests
• Less obvious, harder to fake
• May tap underlying
(unconscious) psychological
processes
• May be effective with guarded
patients and kids
• May help us understand
disorders in which symptoms
are not immediately present
Disadvantages of
Projective Tests
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Reliability and validity
Cross-cultural issues
Complex scoring systems
Cumbersome, time-consuming
Uses of the Rorschach
• Describes perceptual-cognitive
aspects of the individual
• Elicits need states that are
projected onto the blots
• Gives info on strengths and
weaknesses
Limitations of the
Rorschach
• Diagnostic decision-making
• Treatment planning
• Predicting behavior
Administering the
Rorschach
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Introduction
Free association
Inquiry
(Then lots and lots of coding
and scoring)
What Gets Interpreted?
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Location
Content
Determinants
Form quality
Special scores
Structural summary
Location
Where does the client see what
she sees?
• W
Whole blot
• D
Common detail
• Dd
Uncommon detail
• S
White space
Content
• Human
• Animal
• Other
– Idiosyncratic
– Morbid
– Aggressive movement
Determinants
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Form (F)
Chromatic color (C, CF, FC)
Achromatic color (C’, C’F, FC’)
Light-dark features
– Shading (Y, YF, FY)
– Texture (T, TF, FT)
– Vista (V, VF, FV)
• Movement
-Human (M) vs. animal (FM)
vs. inanimate (m)
- Active (a) vs. Passive (p)
Form Quality
+
Superior (good form,
unusually well-developed)
o
Ordinary (good form,
nothing special)
u/w Weak/unusual (poor form,
but plausible)
Minus (poor form, grossly
distorted)
Special Scores
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Unusual verbalizations
Fabulized Combination
Contamination
Perseveration
Structural Summary
• Completed after the Sequence
of Scores
• A form in which totals across
the cards are calculated
• Includes many, varied ratios
percentages and derivations
• Rorschach interpretation is
based on this structural
summary
Ratios, Percentages &
Derivations
• L=(sum of pure F)/(sum of
nonpure F)
• EB= M : Sum C
• EA= M + Sum C
• eb= Fm + m : T + Y + V + C’
• ep= Fm + m + T + Y + V + C’
• W:M
• F+%
Rorschach
Interpretation
• Involves Putting the structural
summary together with clinical
data
• Areas of interest:
– Cognitive style
– Emotional style
– Ego strength and coping
– Interpersonal style
Critique
• CS norms are poor
• May not work well on minorities
• Score reliability is poor for
about half the scores
• Test-retest r is low or unknown
for many scores
• Number of responses
influences scores
• Rorschach scores don’t hang
together
• Low predictive and incremental
validity