Perceptanalysis

The Rorschach Method Fundamentally Reworked, Expanded and Systematized

Z. A. Piotrowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134736614
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First Published in 1987. The Rorschach method since its creation in 1921 has gradually come to dominate the field of projective techniques in both the United States and Europe. Along with the Thematic Apperception and the Szondi tests, it is among the most widely used tools in clinical psychiatry, where it contributes to the understanding of personality patterns and to the evaluation of degrees of mental disorder. This book written by Dr. Zygmunt A. Piotrowski, who is an outstanding pioneer worker in the field of perceptanalysis, having spent twenty-two years of active research endeavor to elucidate the various problems. The material is well organized and lucidly presented in a way to enable the student as well as the more mature clinicians to understand many details not available previously in Rorschach publications. In fact, we have here the most complete book yet written on perceptanalysis as a science. The text explains in a concrete, step-by-step fashion the process of the examination in terms of the administration of the test; the basic principles of scoring, which are so fundamentally important; the determinant components of form, human movement, nonhuman-movement, color, and shading responses; and the meaning of the content.

Chapter 1

Perceptanalysis as a Science

Meaning of “Perceptanalysis.” The term “perceptanalysis” has been chosen to emphasize the essential feature of Rorschach’s experimental technique of personality investigation. The technique consists of eliciting percepts, or visual images, by making the subject give meaningful interpretations of ambiguous and indeterminate visual stimuli. These interpretations are a function both of the objective visual stimuli and of the meaning which the subject ascribes to them. The subject usually experiences these interpretations as a product of his imagination. Rorschach¹, ^1a spoke of his inkblot test as “the interpretation of accidental forms, i.e., of non-specific forms.” ^2b The logically essential point is not that the stimuli are accidental, ambiguous, or unstructured. The essential requirements are: (1) that the visual stimuli elicit a great number of varied percepts from different people looking at them; (2) that each individual produce a limited number of percepts; (3) that the sets of percepts vary from one individual to another to a maximum degree; (4) that the set or pattern of percepts of each individual vary in accordance with the changes in his personality, be these changes slow and gradual or rapid and marked; and (5) that the same formal aspects and the same material content of the percepts have the same connotation for everybody, that the same percept have the same meaning no matter by whom or when produced and be subordinate only to the principle of interdependence of components (cf. p. 390). Perceptanalysis is a method of personality investigation, the unique feature of which is that the inferences about a subject’s personality must be based solely on the analysis of the formal aspects and of the material content of the subject’s interpretations of ambiguous and indeterminate visual stimuli. It is more than a test. It is a way of reasoning.

One of the basic perceptanalytic principles is that the scope, reliability, validity, and significance of the inferences depend to a large extent upon the degree of vagueness or lack of structure of the stimuli. As a rule, the more structured is the visual stimulus and the more it resembles real objects, the less valuable are the responses to it as indicators of personality. Increased vagueness and ambiguity of the stimulus are accompanied by an increase in the significance, scope, and validity of the inferences drawn from an analysis of the percepts. Thus the percepts prompted by ambiguous inkblots are of greater scientific value than percepts prompted by observations of real people or of pictures of real people.

This book is limited to percepts produced by viewing inkblots, more specifically, the original Rorschach set of blots. There is no doubt that all percepts have much in common regardless of the nature of the releasing stimulus, be they blot interpretations, stories built around pictures,^{2, 3, 4, 5} free or partially controlled drawings, ^{6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11} handwriting,^{12, 13, 14} drawings of lines and geometric figures,¹⁵ reactions to facial expressions,¹⁶ or even dreams. There may one day be an organized body of perceptanalytic rules which, in a highly valid and at the same time objective and standardized way, will permit us to infer personality traits from dream images even without additional associations to the manifest dream material.

When Rorschach called his method “psychodiagnostics, a diagnostic test based on perception,” ^3c he used these terms literally. His fundamental assumption was that the percepts, i.e., what is perceived in the blots, reflect the perceiver’s personality traits. Even before Rorschach, attempts had been made to study the content of percepts prompted by inkblots or clouds or similarly vague stimuli in order to gain some information about personality. Rorschach’s genius consisted in discovering that very significant traits can be deduced from the formal aspects of the blots, and in indicating what trait is revealed by what formal aspect. There had been some small beginnings but Rorschach created a large, new, and original system disclosing the vast and unsuspected possibilities of an analysis of the formal aspects of percepts. There is now a tendency to rely more and more on the content of blot interpretations and to neglect their formal aspects. One of the reasons for introducing the term “perceptanalysis” is to stress the most original and least replaceable part of Rorschach’s contribution: the formal or structural features of the percepts. The content is important but much less so than the formal aspects. Using the term percept-analysis might help to stop the tendency to slip back to the pre-Rorschach period. Rorschach thought that the “interpretation [of the blots] may be called a special type of perception; there is therefore no doubt that this experiment can be called a test of the perceptive power of the subject.”^4d

Rorschach (1884–1922) produced more than an experiment or a test. He created a new, systematic, independent, and comprehensive science, capable of great developments and of a long and steady growth beyond the lifetime of its creator. Many changes have been introduced into his remarkable technique. The innovators pay little attention to one another so that there are several variants of the Rorschach method. However, that which the different authors have taken from Rorschach is much greater and methodologically more significant than the features which they have added and in which they deviate from Rorschach and from one another. The term “percept-analysis” may perhaps serve as a standard around which all those interested in enlarging, deepening, and developing Rorschach’s method can rally. The need to follow in the master’s footsteps will decrease for the good of the new science Rorschach created if we work under the impersonal banner of perceptanalysis. All the separate streams of the Rorschach endeavor in their transient and tentative aspects should be filtered and purified, strengthened and regulated, by a cooperative effort and turned into new and more profitable channels.

Critique of “Projective Technique.” The term “projective technique” is currently employed to describe all personality tests which present the subject with indeterminate and ambiguous visual stimuli but which expect definite and decisive responses. However, this designation is usually either specific and wrong or it is vague and general. It is wrong if Freud’s definition of projection is meant. Freud ¹⁷ defined projection as unwittingly ascribing to others anxiety-producing tendencies of which one unconsciously disapproves in himself and which one represses. The perceptanalytic personality methods, however, reveal not only the repressed and unacceptable traits. They disclose also completely acceptable traits of which the subject is proud as well as conscious. In 1928, Lewis⁶ described the patients’ drawings and other graphic productions as “an avenue of projection.” He used this perceptanalytic material to unravel personality and to further psychotherapy by analyzing the patient’s production with him. “Frequently the basic unconscious difficulties of certain patients are through this manner of objectification brought to consciousness with greater facility than through dream analysis.” ^5e However, not only the patient’s weakness but also his strength is expressed in his graphic productions.

In 1936 and 1937, I¹⁸ compared to geometric projection the manner in which personality manifests itself in the blot interpretations.

Thanks to stereometry we can conveniently study a three-dimensional and not easily accessible body when it is projected onto a small and accessible two-dimensional plane. Thanks to the Rorschach method we can study the living personality in the variety of its aspects much more conveniently by analyzing the reactions to inkblots than through direct observation. In projection it is essential to preserve only the identity of relations while the nature of the terms among which the relations hold is changed. Projection does not change the nature of all personality factors in the same manner.^6f

Some personality traits are reflected by the Rorschach method with hardly any distortion, e.g., the tendency to compete, or the opposite tendency to seek not to assert oneself and not to struggle but to assume a passive and compliant attitude toward others; these traits are disclosed in the content of the human movement responses. Other traits are indicated in much less obvious ways, e.g., the readiness to exert oneself in a prolonged and consciously directed manner in order to accomplish something noteworthy and difficult which will attract and impress others is disclosed by the production of a larger than average number of qualitatively good interpretations covering entire blots. Color responses reveal the capacity for meaningful emotional relationships with others, while the light-shading responses disclose the capacity for an effortless control over the outward manifestations of emotions. There is a difference in nature between real emotion and an interpretation of a color blot, between capacity for self-control and an interpretation of light-shading areas. However, the relationship itself is maintained: The relation between the individual’s emotions and his control over the overt behavior associated with these emotions is paralleled by the relation between his color and his light-shading responses during a Rorschach examination.

Frank,¹⁹ in 1938, applied the term “projective methods” to all techniques of personality investigation in which definite and meaningful responses to at least partially unstructured and indefinite visual stimuli are solicited.

A projective method for the study of personality involves the presentation of a stimulus-situation designed or chosen because it will mean, to the subject, not what the experimenter has arbitrarily decided it should mean, but whatever it must mean to the personality who gives it, or imposes upon it, his private idiosyncratic meaning and organization.^7g

The new “projective” personality tests allow everyone to assign his personal meaning to the test stimuli and thus to reveal his individuality. Still, the term “projection” is too vague and general whether the perceptanalytic procedures are compared to geometry or whether the point is stressed that the unstructured test material gives the subject an opportunity to express his idiosyncrasy. General intelligence and educational achievement tests give an opportunity to impose private idiosyncratic meanings, as is attested by the great variety of wrong responses to these tests. Even test gives an opportunity to a natural force to express itself, regardless of the nature of the force, be it light, air, water, electricity, biological processes, or human personality. The ampler this opportunity, the better is the test. Gravity is projected into every movement and balance, the power of temperature is projected into the contraction and expansion of gases, liquids, and solid bodies. However, this kind of projection is synonymous with self-expression and thus is too general a term. It is more precise to describe the new personality techniques as perceptanalytic rather than as projective.

Rorschach Method as a Method of Personality Evaluation. Rorschach stated that his test was primarily an aid to clinical diagnosis. To us today it is above all a technique for personality evaluation and only secondarily a diagnostic aid. Experience has shown that the Rorschach method lends itself more easily to inferring many personality traits correctly than to offering neuropsychiatric diagnoses which will be confirmed years later by a careful follow-up and more valid clinical rediagnoses. In fact, with the exception of the Rorschach method, the perceptanalytic techniques can rarely be used as diagnostic aids. Acute and clear cases will reveal their pathognomonic features in any situation including perceptanalytic examinations. The great majority of cases, however, do not produce anything pathognomonic or sufficiently significant in any perceptanalytic technique other than the Rorschach to lead to correct diagnoses.

If the function of Rorschach perceptanalysis is an investigation of personality, it behooves us to ask what is personality, or more exactly, what kind of personality is accessible to perceptanalysis? Perhaps the simplest answer is that the perceptanalytic method reveals and measures psychological traits, feelings, thoughts, and actions, concerning those psychosocial interactions between the individual and his environment which required some time and imagination to develop and to become habits. These habits are not immutable, but—barring severe injuries which may cause sudden and/or irreversible personality changes for the worse—they change slowly. Reflex actions and automatic behavior patterns which are of relative indifference to the individual are not reflected directly in perceptanalysis, although many of them can be inferred indirectly especially if the social conditions and culture in which the individual lives are well known. The Rorschach method detects those psychological tendencies which have a vital bearing on the subject’s relationships with other people:²⁰ The reality which we know is not one that is independent of the perceiving subject. It depends on the sensations and percepts of the subject. These, in turn, are materially influenced by the subject’s activities. Therefore, the stronger the tendency to act and to change the world in which the individual lives, the more numerous and the more imaginative are his interpretations of the Rorschach blots. The greater his tendency to withdraw, to be passive and inert, the fewer and less imaginative are the subject’s Rorschach responses.

There are a multitude of definitions of personality ranging from a general one such as “anything said about a person” to specific ones such as “physical and affective qualities as they synthetically attract or impress others.” ^21,8h The general definition does not explain anything beyond implying that personality refers to people. The specific definition is not workable because it does not point to anything unequivocal. Different people are impressed and attracted by different qualities of an individual; thus, we would have to have multiple and incompatible definitions of personality for each individual. The definition is also too narrow. To have a more complete idea of personality, one which would enable us to make valid predictions, we need to know more personality traits than those which attract others. The traits which repel others are as real as those which attract and consequently must be included in a personality description.

Warren’s dictionary²² contains this definition: “the integrated organization of all the cognitive, affective, conative, and physical characteristics of an individual as it manifests itself in focal distinctness to others.” ⁹ⁱ This imposes the task of detecting the uniqueness of the individual. Personality investigations at present are too incomplete and not sufficiently precise to measure validly many common traits, let alone to indicate the unique integration of all characteristics of single individuals. This definition may be of use to future personologists when personality techniques will have become nearly perfect, but it is impractical now. Furthermore, not only the unique traits but also those shared with others are significant. The final test of each science is correct prediction, and knowledge of universal traits may be more important in predicting conduct in most life situations than knowledge of unique traits. The dictionary also defines personality as “the general characterization, or pattern, of an individual’s total behavior.” This presupposes a knowledge of the total personality. Now, there is no way to study and measure objectively the total personality and perhaps there never will be. The best we can expect is to be able to measure a sufficiently large number of significant traits and their interrelations so that an understanding of the motivation of the most important life actions can be obtained, and predictions of conduct in some of the most important life situations can be made. We need not possess perfect knowledge to have useful knowledge. The next definition, “the field property or form of the individual’s total behavior pattern,” is a paraphrase of the preceding one. The Warren definition which is most useful states that personality is “those characteristics of an individual most important in determining his social adjustment,” except that the perceptanalyst does not limit adjustment to externally observable traits but includes the individual’s inner experiences relating to his interactions with others. Two persons may be equally well adjusted to others in their overt behavior but one of them must inhibit many spontaneous drives, while the other achieves the good adjustment without any sacrifice in spontaneity. The personalities of these persons are quite different.

Perceptanalysis reveals many ways in which the individual perceives his psychosocial relationships and the degree and manner in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Contents
• 1. Perceptanalysis as a Science
• 2. Rorschach Perceptanalysis: Its Development and Theoretical Foundation
• 3. Administration of the Test and Basic Principles of Scoring
• 4. Area Components
• 5. Determinant Components: Form Responses
• 6. The Human-Movement Response
• 7. The Nonhuman-Movement Responses and Their Relationship to the Human-Movement Responses
• 8. Color Responses
• 9. Shading Responses
• 10. Pace and Shocks
• 11. Content
• 12. Principle of Interdependence of Components
• 13. Individual Case Studies
• References
• Index