THE RORSCHACH TEST
Dr Aarti Gorwadkar

HERMAN RORSCHACH
8 November 1884 – 1 April 1922

HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT
• Rorschach primarily wanted to establish
empirically based discriminations among
different groups and was only minimally
concerned with the symbolical interpretation
of contents.
• 1940s and 1950s, the name Rorschach was
almost synonymous with clinical psychology.
• Unfortunately, Rorschach died at age 37,
shortly after the publication of his major work,
Psychodiagnostik (1921/1941).

• One of the early difficulties in establishing the
psychometric properties of the Rorschach was in
making meaningful comparisons across various
studies.
• By 1957, five Rorschach systems were in wide
use, the most popular being those developed by
Beck and Klopfer.
• The wide range of often competing approaches
resulted in numerous detrimental practices.

Cont..
• Beck emphasized that the response to the
Rorschach involved primarily a perceptual-
cognitive process in which the respondents
structure and organize their perceptions into
meaningful responses.
• B. Klopfer emphasized the symbolical and
experiential nature of a respondent’s
Rorschach contents.

Cont…
• Exner (1969) for the first time provided a
comparative analysis of these different
systems.
• The general conclusion, based on these
findings, was that the research on and the
clinical use of the Rorschach were seriously
flawed.
• The final product was first published in 1974
as The Rorschach: A Comprehensive System.

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY
• Establishing the validity of the Rorschach as a
whole has been complicated by the many scoring
categories and quantitative formulas, each of
which has varying levels of validity.
• Early meta-analyses indicated that validity ranged
from .40 to .50
• With the exception of a few disorders
(schizophrenia, borderline personality, bipolar
disorder), the Rorschach has not been very
effective at assisting with making formal
psychiatric diagnosis, according to a few analysts.

PRINCIPLE
• Stimuli from the environment are organized
by a person’s specific needs, motives, and
conflicts, and by certain perceptual “sets.”
• This need for organization becomes more
exaggerated, extensive, and conspicuous
when subjects are confronted with
ambiguous stimuli, such as inkblots.

Cont..
• The process by which persons organize
their responses to the Rorschach is
representative of how they confront
other ambiguous situations requiring
organization and judgment.

Purpose
• Cognitive structuring
• Thematic imagery
• Motivations
• Response tendencies
• Cognitive operations
• Affectivity
• Personal and Interpersonal perceptions

ADVANTAGES
• High resistance to faking.
• Can be used with an individual from any age
group.
• Can be used even when no relatives or
attendants are available to substantiate or
give history.
• Cross cultural researches on basic personlaity
structures.

Cont….
• Evaluate the therapeutic efficacy ( before and
after application of a specific therapy)
• Can be used to explore the unconscious motives
for the behavior.
• For cases of compensation neurosis for disability
who intentionally pretend to have more disability.
• One frequently noted asset is that the Rorschach
is considered to be excellent at bypassing a
person’s conscious resistance.

LIMITATIONS
• Scoring and interpretation are often quite
complicated and time-consuming.
• It is one of the most complex psychological
tests in current use, error can potentially be
introduced from many different directions.
• Reliability and validity studies performed on
one system did not necessarily mean that the
findings from these studies could be
generalized to any of the other systems.

LIMITATIONS
• With the exception of a few disorders
(schizophrenia, borderline personality, bipolar
disorder), the Rorschach has not been very
effective at assisting with making formal
psychiatric diagnosis.
• Time required to analyze results.
• Learning curve is very long.
• Often been considered to have limited use
with children.

APPARATUS
• Complete set of 10 Rorschach plates
• Rorschach location charts (Mini Plates)
• Plain paper, pencil and pen
• A decent, comfortable and naturally or
artificially lit room is very important.

THE TESTING PLACE
• Test MUST ALWAYS be administered in a very
peaceful environment.
• Test should be administered in privacy and in
a non disturbing area.
• The entry of unknown people while testing is
in progress should be avoided. This is very
crucial.

INSTRUCTION TO THE TESTER
• Exner recommends that the examiner hand
the subject the first card and ask, “What might
this be?”
• Commentary on, or discussion of the cards by
the examiner, should be avoided as much as
possible.
• The main objective is to give the subject
maximum freedom to respond to the stimuli
in his or her own manner.

• The tester must have a clear idea in his mind
as to what is the purpose of the
administration of this test to a certain patient.

INTRODUCING THE TEST TO THE
RESPONDENT
• Rapport formation.
• Clear introduction to the testing procedure,
obtaining personal history, answering
questions.
• Emphasize relatively neutral words such as
inkblot, interests, or imagination, rather than
potentially anxiety-provoking words such as
intelligence or ambiguous.

Cont..
• Any specific information regarding what
subjects should do or say is to be avoided.

SAMPLE INTRODUCTION

• You will be taking an interesting test of
thinking and imagination ability today.
• It requires about an hour or sometimes more.
• This test would help me in understanding your
problems, strong and weak points in your
personality. It would be helpful in overall
management of the treatment plan.
• I shall be giving you one by one a series of 10
plates made of inkblots. Some of them are in
black and white and some are multicolor.

• On seeing the plate, you’re supposed to tell me
everything what you see on the plate.
• You are to tell me everything that might be
represented by these blots.
• People see all sorts of things on these inkblot
pictures. Tell me what it might be for you, what it
looks like, what it resembles with.
• There are no right or wrong answers. So, you are
free to tell me whatever comes to your mind on
seeing the plate without feeling embarassed if its
right or wrong.
• You are free to ask any question.

THE TEST PROPER

THE RESPONSE (ASSOCIATION) PHASE
• Time the interval:
1) First see the card and ends when they make
their initial response.
2) total time they spend with each card.
• Recording of time should be done as
inconspicuously as possible.
• The average number of responses is 22.32
• The testee should be encouraged regularly to
tell whatever comes to his mind.

• The encouragement should be reduced
progressively and after the 5th or 6th plate, the
encouragement should be stopped.
• After that, if the testee returns back any plate
without any response before 1min, then and
only then the tester should try to encourage.

Cont…
• A client who produces an extremely brief
protocol (fewer than fourteen responses)
should be immediately retested and provided
with a clearer request to provide more
responses.
• If a client provides six or more responses to
the first inkblot, the examiner should remove
the inkblot.
• All responses must be recorded verbatim.

Cont…
• A set of abbreviations used throughout all the
Rorschach systems consists of the symbols (V,
> ,ᴧ, < ) in which the peak indicates the angle
of the card.
• Note any odd or unusual responses to the
cards.

INQUIRY
• Most important phase for scoring and
interpretation.
• The inquiry should begin after all 10 cards
have been administered.
• It is intended to clarify the responses that
have already been given, not to obtain new
responses.
• Any questions should be as nondirective as
possible.
• Tester should repeat the original response
given.

Cont..
• In this phase, responses can be recorded either
verbatim or in the abbreviated style whichever is
suitable.
• An additional feature of the inquiry is to test the
subject’s awareness of his or her responses.
• Thus the emphasis is on: location and
determinants for each percept.
• It is critically important to prepare the
respondent.
• Thorndike’s law of recency.

SAMPLE INTRODUCTION

• Now we are going to go back through the
cards again. It won’t take very long. I want to
see the thing that you said you saw and make
sure that I see them like you do.
• We’ll do them one at a time. I’ll read what you
said and then I want you to show me where it
is in the blot and then tell me what there is
there that makes it look like that to you, so
that I can see it too, just like you did.
• Is that clear?

PLATE 1

PLATE 2

PLATE 3

PLATE 4

PLATE 5

PLATE 6

PLATE 7

PLATE 8

PLATE 9

PLATE 10

REFERNCES
• A practical manual for the rorchach test by
Dwarka Pershad and Suresh Parekh.
• Handbook of psychological assessment 4th
edition by Gary Groth Marnat.
• En.wikipedia.org/
• http://oink.elrellano.com/desastre/rorschach_
inkblot_test.html