The Rorschach Inkblot Test consists of 10 inkblots printed on cards created by Hermann Rorschach in 1921. It was widely used in clinical psychology throughout the 20th century but has also been controversial due to difficulties studying it systematically. In 1969, John Exner concluded the five main scoring systems differed so significantly it was as if five different tests had been created. This led him to develop a comprehensive new scoring system, published in 1973, which became the gold standard.

2. The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective psychological test
consisting of 10 inkblots printed on cards (five in black and
white, five in color) created in 1921 with the publication of
Psychodiagnostik by Hermann Rorschach. During the
1940s and 1950s, the test was synonymous with clinical
psychology. Throughout much of the 20th century, the
Rorschach inkblot test was a commonly used and
interpreted psychological test. In surveys in 1947 (Louttit
and Browne) and 1961 (Sundberg), for instance, it was the
fourth and first, respectively, most frequently used
psychological test.
Despite its widespread use, it has also been the center of
much controversy. It has often proven to be difficult for
researchers to study the test and its results in any
systematic manner, and the use of multiple kinds of scoring
systems for the responses given to each inkblot has led to
some confusion.

3.  Hermann Rorschach did not make it clear where he got the
idea from the test. However, like most children of his time, he
often played the popular game called Blotto
(Klecksographie), which involved creating poem-like
associations or playing charades with inkblots. The inkblots
could be purchased easily in many stores at the time. It is
also thought that a close personal friend and teacher, Konrad
Gehring, may have also suggested the use of inkblots as a
psychological tool.
 When Eugen Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia in 1911,
Rorschach took interest and wrote his dissertation about
hallucinations (Bleuler was Rorschach’s dissertation
chairperson). In his work on schizophrenia patients,
Rorschach inadvertently discovered that they responded
quite differently to the Blotto game than others. He made a
brief report of this finding to a local psychiatric society, but
nothing more came of it at the time. It wasn’t until he was
established in his psychiatric practice in Russia’s Krombach
hospital in Herisau in 1917 that he became interested in
systematically studying the Blotto game.

4.  Rorschach used about 40 inkblots in his original studies in 1918
through 1921, but he would administer only about 15 of them
regularly to his patients. Ultimately he collected data from 405
subjects (117 non-patients which he used as his control group). His
scoring method minimized the importance of content, instead
focusing on how to classify responses by their different
characteristics. He did this using a set of codes — now called scores
— to determine if the response was talking about the whole inkblot
(W), for instance, a large detail (D), or a smaller detail. F was used to
score for form of the inkblot, and C was used to score whether the
response included color.
 In 1919 and 1920, he tried to find a publisher for his findings and the
15 inkblot cards he regularly used. However, every published balked
at publishing all 15 inkblots because of printing costs. Finally in 1921,
he found a publisher — the House of Bircher — willing to publish his
inkblots, but only 10 of them. Rorschach reworked his manuscript to
include only 10 of the 15 inkblots he most commonly used
 The printer, alas, was not very good at being true to the original
inkblots. Rorschach’s original inkblots had no shading to them —
they were all solid colors. The printer’s reproduction of them added
shading. Rorschach reportedly was actually quite pleased with the
introduction of this new addition to his inkblots. After publishing his
monograph with the inkblots, entitled a Form Interpretation Test, he
died in 1922 after being admitted to a hospital for abdominal pains.
Rorschach was only 37 years old and had been formally working on
his inkblot test just four years.

5.  The person who is testing the test subject sits next to
the person who is being tested, only slightly behind
them.
 The cards are shown in a specific order, each one
testing something different.
 The person who is testing the test subject takes notes
of everything. Their breathing, the way they move the
card, what they say, how they move, everything.
 The “tester” will hide his notes as to keep the test area
more comfortable to the person being tested.
 The cards are usually made up of cardboard, or a
plastic designed to mimic cardboard.
 Everything that the test subject does says something
about them.

6.  These are the ten ink blots, in the order that
they appear. There will be possible imagery
that is most commonly said, and some more
about them. Remember, it is not just what
you say about them, but if you were testing,
it would be how you look at them, how you
turn them, etc.

7.  Prior to the 1970s, there were five primary scoring systems for how
people responded to the inkblots. They were dominated by two —
the Beck and the Klopfer systems. Three other that were used less
often were the Hertz, Piotrowski and the Rapaport-Schafer systems.
In 1969, John E. Exner, Jr. published the first comparison of these
five systems entitled The Rorschach Systems.
 The findings of Exner’s ground-breaking analysis were that there
actually weren’t five scoring systems for the Rorschach. He
concluded that the five systems differed so dramatically and
significantly, it was as if five uniquely different Rorschach tests had
been created. It was time to go back to the drawing board.
 Given Exner’s disturbing findings, he decided to undertake the
creation of a new, comprehensive Rorschach scoring system that
would take into account the best components of these five existing
systems, combined with extensive empirical research on each
component. A foundation was established in 1968 and the
significant research began into creating a new scoring system for
the Rorschach. The result was that in 1973, Exner published the
first edition of The Rorschach: A Comprehensive System. In it, he
laid out the new scoring system that would become the new gold
standard (and the only scoring system now taught).

8. The Rorschach Inkblot test was not originally
intended to be a projective measure of
personality. Instead, it was meant to produce a
profile of people with schizophrenia (or other
mental disorders) based upon score frequencies.
Rorschach himself was skeptical of his test being
used as a projective measure.
The Rorschach is, at its most basic level, a
problem-solving task that provides a picture of
the psychology of the person taking it, and some
level of understanding the person’s past and
future behavior. Imagination is involved most
often in the embellishment of a response, but the
basic process of the task has little to do with
imagination or creativity.