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Validity of rorschach inkblot test
Rorschach test explained
Rorschach test explained
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many, the word Rorschach is quite unknown and to others it is simply known as the inkblot test and even then, the real meaning of the Rorschach test is never acknowledged. The Rorschach inkblot test is a psychological projective test of personality in which a subject’s interpretation of ten standard abstract designs are analyzed as measure of emotional and intellectual functioning and combination. Also, like other projective techniques, “it is based on the principle that subjects viewing neutral, ambiguous stimuli will project their own personalities onto them, thereby revealing a variety of unconscious conflicts and motivations.” (Aronow; p 25)
This test, which is administered to both adolescents and adults, can also be used with children as young as three years old. The test provides information about a person’s thought process, perceptions, motivations and attitude toward his or her environment. It can also detect internal and external pressures and conflicts as well as illogical or psychotic thought patterns. There is a lot of confusion on the actual first creator and/or founder of this famous test.
The Rorschach was named after a Swiss psychiatrist named Hermann Rorschach. He was born in 1884 in Zurich and died in 1922 due to complications with appendicitis. He was the original developer of the inkblots, but he did not use them for personality analysis like they are used today. Throughout his lifetime, Hermann took a deep interest in psychoanalysis, and during the early 1900’s he published several psychoanalytic articles. It was just in 1911 that he had begun experimenting with the interpretation of ink blots as a mean of determining introversion and extroversion. Although some people would think he was the first to do so, Rorschach was not the first one to study ink blots; among his famous forerunners of the inkblots are Leonardo da Vinci and Jusinus Kerner.
In 1921 the first edition was actually published by Ernest Bircher. The test appeared under the name of a book called Psychodiagnostik, which had actually been first written by Hermann Rorschach in 1919 but he had problems finding a publisher so it was not well received when it first came out. Since 1927 Hans Huber has been the publisher of the Rorschach test and the related book Psychodiagnostics (English ...
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...ut turning the cards at odd angles or covering portions of the cards is considered as signs of brain damage.
In conclusion, even though the test was developed for purposes totally unrelated to accessing character structure and personality problems, psychologists today have found ways to use this test in order to help access personality and probe the unconscious mind. Also, despite all the controversy that is caused by this test regarding the results and if they are meaningless, there are still findings that even though throughout the decades it is used less, to this day it is still a number one choice to assess a personality.
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It is amazing to look back and realize that this experiment was done to determine how the Nazis could all have so much hate towards the Jewish people. The lack of compassion towards humans shown by the Nazi Germans during the holocaust inspired Milgram to conduct this experiment. He was curious on how any sane human being could want to participate in genocide of an entire group of people. It’s incredible to know that something like the Nazi war could bring about such valuable information to psychology. For years Milgram’s theory has been one of the primary points of social psychology. Because of the results revealed after Milgram’s creative design, psychologists use this information today to describe certain behaviors in people. I believe it is fair to say that Stanley Milgram has had one of the largest impacts in the history of social psychology.
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Utility of assessment. Why are these types of personality assessments useful? Did you find the results useful? Why or why not?
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Taking any type of personality test can lead to a lot of thought and reflection on yourself,