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Rorschach Inkblot Test

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Rorschach Inkblot Test

a device, designed by Rorschach (1921), to allow a person to project his/her personality so that problems may be uncovered and resolved. This is therefore a PROJECTIVE TEST, which is based on a holistic, phenomenological approach to understanding personality dynamics.

In practice, the client/patient is shown a series of ink-blot type patterns which are regarded as ambiguous stimuli. The ambiguity allows a variety of different interpretations to be put on them, and features selected from them. The client/ patient is encouraged to talk about what he or she sees in the patterns, and the therapist uses these responses as clues to unconscious or difficult-to-voice concerns which can then be explored. A scoring system has been developed through observations made on various clinical and normal groups, but scoring is still necessarily subjective and interpretation of the responses is regarded as a skilled activity, requiring much experience.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
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Overall, the authors suggest that due to the inconsistent literature on the Rorschach Inkblot Test and other related psychological tools, practitioners should be very selective when they use these assessments and use them in ways, which have strong empirical support.
The Rorschach Inkblot test is one of the richest performance-based techniques for examination of personality characteristics in various clinical and research settings (Camera, Nathan andamp; Puente, 2000).
* Projective assessments, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, are used less frequently in the UK.
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