Projective Tests (Rorschach Inkblots)

1921

Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922)

A new kind of psychological test dominated the period from the early 1920s until the 1960s. So-called projective tests were developed in the hopes of eliciting unconscious material from patients. Sigmund Freud had theorized that psychologically relevant material was often suppressed because it contained wishes and impulses that were socially unacceptable, yet it was just this material that held the key to unlocking the psyche and bringing relief. A projective test uses ambiguous stimuli in the form of images, words, or objects to which the client is asked to respond. For example, a patient may be asked to complete this sentence stem: “When I was a child my father …” No diagnosis or therapy was offered on the basis of one response, but when numerous such ambiguous stimuli are presented, a person’s psychological issues emerge in the pattern of responses.

The first formal projective test is the eponymously named Rorschach Projective Technique, first published in 1921. Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, nicknamed Inkblot as a child, was influenced by both Freud and Carl Jung and used his childhood fascination with inkblots to create a test to use with mental patients. It was brought to the United States in the 1920s and quickly became the most widely used assessment tool in psychiatric settings. New projective tests soon emerged, such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Dramatic Productions Test, and the Szondi, the Blacky, and the Lowenfeld Mosaic tests, to name only a few of hundreds. All of these tests assumed that the most important determinants of behavior had their origins in the unconscious. As TAT codeveloper Henry Murray was fond of saying, “Every man knows something about himself which he is willing to tell; he knows something about himself that he is not willing to tell; and there is something about himself that he doesn’t know and can’t tell.”

SEE ALSO Psychoanalysis (1899), Thematic Apperception Test (1935), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (1940)

The Rorschach Projective Technique, first published in 1921, used ambiguous inkblots to uncover hidden psychological issues in mental patients and quickly became the most widely used psychiatric assessment tool in the United States.