Review of The Rorschach Technique

Abstract

Reviews the book, The Rorschach Technique by B. Klopfer and D.M. Kelley (1942). This book is a manual for the administration, scoring, and interpretation of the Rorschach method of personality diagnosis. It describes the method as used by the majority of workers in this country, and deviates in some respects from the original formulations of H. Rorschach in his Psychodiagnostik . These changes have been mainly in the direction of multiplying and making more explicit the scoring categories; Rorschach's basic assumptions, the theory of personality structure, and the interpretative significance of the categories remain relatively unchanged. The book is divided into four parts, the first three of which were written by Dr. Klopfer. The first consists of a history of the method and a consideration of methodological problems including a discussion of the "objectivity" of projective tests and the role of statistics in their validation and standardization. Part II (about a third of the book) describes the technique of administration and the scoring system. Part III consists, first, of definitions of the variables which the method purports to describe, e.g., introversion and extra version, control (constriction and dilation), emotional responsiveness, the mental approach, anxiety, maturity, etc., and second, of statements of the significance of the scoring categories with respect to these variables. In the last section Dr. Kelley summarizes the Rorschach findings in intracranial organic pathology, dementia praecox, the psychoneuroses, mental deficiency and other clinical conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)