What is Up with the Rorschach Test and is It Actually Valid

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[rhov-anion]

I saw a therapist when I was 9 for anxiety and losing my hair from stress, and I was given the inkblot test. I don't remember my answers, but I do recall the therapist being quiet for a while. I feared I had answered wrong. She then asked if I liked to come up with stories, and I told her how I was drawing storyboards for what I hoped would be a fantasy story about dragons. (I actually did write the book over a decade later.) She smiled like she was holding back a laugh, because I got really animated finally having a chance to tell someone about this and them not telling me I was stupid. She said, "I can tell you have a big imagination." I thought that was really nice of her to say, so I told my parents about it. My older brother replied, "You probably answered like a psychopath!" You gotta love brothers.

[Not-Great-at-Gaming]

Card two is clearly "Two bears high fiving".

[ferguson]

It also works amazing well in diagnosing if a person is blind or not

[nbarnes]

I could also see how someone's cultural background and life experience would make a huge impact on what they see.

[TarkMcCoy]

My father was a psychologist in the US Army in the late 1950's and gave the Rorschach test to a catatonic soldier back from the Korean front. The subject finally responded to one of the cards with "Donuts, I see donuts". Finally getting the subject to open up, he discovered how US tankers handled the massive overrun technique the North Korean's used. They'd lock the tracks in opposite directions and spin the tanks like egg beaters, grinding the enemy troops apart with the treads. They called it "Doing Donuts", as one might do in their car. Extra bonus: Cleanup after ops, including pulling/washing fingers, eyeballs, ears and other body parts out of your machine's treads and such. Perhaps understandably, this kind of environment was beyond what the subject could bear.

[aegisofhonor]

I also think that Rorschach himself would have refined the test and the blots used in the test and how it is administered if he had lived longer. The fact that he died so young and so soon after he created and published the Rorschach test makes me believe that it could have been further updated and refined and not just used as it was in areas it was never intended in the way it was first published. Also I believe that Rorschach never intended for the same 10 inkblots to be used forever and would have almost certainly "updated" the inkblots regularly to create a fresh set of blots every few years as to not contaminate the test.

[cphrpunk]

“What do you see?”
An ink spot.
“Now?”
An ink spot.
“Now?”
Another ink spot.
“Seems you have an obsession with ink spots”
You’re the one that brought them, from your house, and are obsessed with showing them to people.

[HeavyMetalMouse]

I've always been told, anecdotally, that the inkblots were not about 'what you saw' and more about 'how you answered'. You could legitimately see anything in the blots, but it was the way you talked about them, your body language, cadence, vocabulary, the kinds of details you chose to focus on, etc, that actually made up what the test was paying attention to. The idea seemed to be that by giving the patient something concrete but abstract to focus on, their natural responses in other ways would be less guarded, more open to view by the examiner - meanwhile, the patient would be focused on the inkblot's content itself, whether in their own true interpretation of it, or in trying to manipulate their answer to 'get it right' in some fashion.

It's interesting to see how that wasn't entirely incorrect - that ultimately, the test is a more 'holistic' test, where everything from the response to the character of the reactions and other details and justifications matter. Fascinating. :)

Also, glad to see the top unpinned comment is about Two Bears High-Fiving. Can't unsee. :)

[dethhollow]

I think the big takeaway is that the test is way better at getting someone to open up than it is to actually figure out a problem based on what they see. If someone sees two elephants or a moth then that isn't going to really tell you much about them, but how they explain that can tell you a lot about how open they are and what they're like. And it also gives you a way to approach things less directly, right? You're not getting them to talk about themself, they're talking about the ink blots, so it could help them open up to the therapist more than they would otherwise.

[gwheregwhizz]

Reminds me of the classic scene in the film Wilt.

Henry Wilt: A butterfly sitting on a Geranium.

Psychologist: You don't think for instance it looks like a woman lying in a pool of blood?

Henry Wilt: Of course I think it looks like a woman lying in a pool of blood but I'm hardly going to tell you that, I'm up on a murder charge.

[SulGhst]

A psychologist did this test with me once. He gave me a minute with each image to list all I could see in it. He had a hard time keeping up with how fast and how many things I could see on them.

That's what you get when your patient spent most of their youth fascinated by monsters, aliens and spaceships.

[eleanor.shadow]

One thing I must say, though: you never ask “what do you see” when giving the test. The correct question is “what could this be?” The assumption being that the word “see” might influence the subject unduly.
Just thought I’d point that out, since my professors drilled it into me when I was learning how to use it 😅

[stupidbeetle]

My ex-wife is bipolar. I could totally see her faking this test if she knew it was a test to begin with. However, if she saw these pictures while manic and didn't know it was a test, I could definitely see her thinking some really weird things about these photos. When she's manic she attributes all kinds of meaning to things that mean nothing. She also sees faces of people she knows in everything. This is just based on my experience.

[capt.bart.roberts]

A guy goes to see a psychiatrist, who gives him The Rorschach Tests. Every one he sees he says reminds him of a sex act. The psychiatrist asks him why, he replies, " It's not my fault, you're the one showing me pornographic pictures! "

[MrHeems]

Back in the day for my armed security job I had to do a full Rorschach test, with a forensic psychologist. As soon as I saw the first picture in the video, I saw a demon with wings... Same thing I saw years ago in the official test for my job. As soon as I said that to the psychologist, I panicked and clarified that I play a video game called Diablo and in my mind, the demon in the picture is from that game lmao. In the moment I thought that was going to cost me my job, but it was cool.

[fryeday]

The very nature of it's subjectivity strikes me as being damning enough to discount it as a useful diagnostic tool.

[catster]

As a kid in the 80s, I was subjected to this test by my school's psychiatrist. It's a core memory because it was the only time I seemed to make this dude happy. He always had a stern look on his face, but he lit up at one of my answers because he had never heard anyone say that before.

[cynthiasimpson]

I had this test when I was 10 or 11. I think it would be interesting to retake it and compare it to my previous test now that I'm 55 years older. The similarities and the differences would both be fascinating to see.

[yesterdaysrose]

I'm an occasional Wikipedia contributor and a former administrator at English Wikipedia (things have been quiet, see). I remember reading about the controversy about including the Rorschach plates in Wikipedia, and I frankly didn't expect it to be mentioned elsewhere. It was one of the many, many, many storms in the teacup in the history of the site.

[possumaintdead]

I remember when I was a teenager my sister and I were looking at a book with Rorschach inkblots and saying what we thought they meant. My mother came over to see and kept saying, “they don’t look like anything!” She got pretty worked up over it. I have often wondered what that said about her.