The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a psychological test involving respondents being presented with 10 images of inkblots and asked to report what they look like. The idea behind the test is that, when presented with an ambiguous stimulus that does not look like anything, but asked to say what it might resemble, the task of forming a response involves organizing what is seen, which draws on personal perception, thinking, memory, internal personal and interpersonal representations, affects, motivations, needs, conflicts, etc. The responses given to the 10 standard inkblot cards are considered a “sample” of one’s response tendencies when faced with other ambiguous stimuli, like the real world in which one lives and functions. Of course, as with responses to other psychological tests, it cannot be known how one’s responses to inkblots parallel responses in other situations until their response are compared against normative sample data and data sets of known criterion groups (e.g., schizophrenic patients). 

The Rorschach has been considered a controversial test in recent decades, and the division of opinion about the test’s value has probably been the most heated topic in the field of psychological assessment in many years. If the reader will indulge me, I think you will agree that this is a fascinating story. 

The Rorschach controversy is not typical or common, though it is hardly unique. It is, perhaps, not unlike any number of other professional issues where differences framed as “scientific” are actually more about fundamental “political” differences. These differences spawn not so much “spirited debate” as irreconcilable hostility. 

If one asks a number of Canadian psychologists (American psychologists are better informed), many if not most will tell you the Rorschach is not a real test. They will characterize its failing as either one of not having a sufficient foundation in research, or, two, that the test’s interpretation is subjective and impressionistic.  My introductory textbook in psychology, in 1982, characterized the Rorschach in this manner, and asserted that the test interpretations said more about the psychologist doing the test than they did about the subject being tested. 

It is always a surprise to psychologists who characterize the Rorschach in these ways when I inform them that the test has a rigorous scoring system that is grounded in decades of extensive research.  In point of fact, there have been more empirical studies of the Rorschach than any other personality test in the field, with the exception of the MMPI / MMPI-2 (Ganellen, 1996). Though the Rorschach, like any other test, has its legitimate problems and limitations, along with its strengths, if the strongly held and passionate denunciation of the method were really about science, you might imagine hearts and minds would be changed, once informed about the substantial body of existing research.

If not science, then what? Earlier I mentioned politics, and in the mental health fields, one of the longest and deeply held political divisions is between psychoanalytic versus other schools of thought.  Actually, it is suggested that “political” difference does not go far enough to capture the profound ideological difference between adherents and detractors of psychoanalytic thought. Neville Symington, one of the foremost psychoanalytic thinkers of the current generation once characterized Psychoanalysis as a “naturalistic religion” (Symington, personal communication, April 10, 2017). This, I think, better reflects what approaches a difference in world view when it comes to the understanding of human nature.