Date of Award

Spring 1964

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Herman Rorschach's book, Psychodiagnostik published in 1921, introduced what is probably the best known of the projective techniques. Rorschach 's untimely death in 1922 left much of the development of the inkblot technique to others and during the decades that followed, the Rorschach blots "developed rapidly as the method par excellence for assessing the motivation, thought processes and basic personality structure of the individual. Beck, Klopfer and others, presented methods of scoring and interpretation. Both "attracted large followings of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and others concerned mainly with the psychodiagnosis of the abnormal personality" while "the main stream or academic psychology looked askance at the Rorschach movement, criticizing its cultist character and lack or scientific discipline."

In 1961, Holtzman, Thorpe, Swartz and Herron in their book, Perception Personality, introduced Holtzman' s new inkblot technique, with information on its development, norms, reliability studies, correlates of inkblot scores and group differences. Since the H.I.T. is so recent, there has been little time for empirical investigation or clinical usage to compare Holtzman's blots with the Rorschach to determine whether it preserves the uniquely valuable projective quality of the Rorschach while meeting adequate standards of measurement.

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