Controversy
The Rorschach ink blot test is controversial for several reasons. Firstly, there is no reason to believe that images found in the ink blots represent some core personality or self rather than feelings, past experience, creativity, or some other part of the mind that would not play a major part in the patient's actions.
Secondly, because the blots of ink are inherently meaningless and subjective, evaluating the results of a test requires the blots of ink to have meaning in the first place. Otherwise, the images projected into the patterns would be of little value in assessing personality traits. But the psychologist must project onto the patterns in order to give them any meaning and, in a sense, take the test him/herself. So the results of any test will not only show what the patient projected onto the ink blots, but also what the psychologist projected onto the projections of the patient. Third parties could be called in to evaluate what effect the psychologist's interpretations had on the results of the test, but the third parties' evaluations would also be slanted by their own subconscious interpretations of meaningless patterns. The process of evaluating and re-evaluating could go on forever.
Thirdly, although a large number of people with a certain trait see specific images in an ink blot-sociable people have a tendency to see animals in this image; people with schizophrenia have a tendency to see a vase in this image - any given person who sees an image that is seen in an ink blot by a large number of people with a specific trait will not necessarily have that trait her/himself. The Holtzman Inkblot Test was designed to resolve some of the problems of the Rorschach test.
When interpreted as a projective test, results are poorly verifiable. The Exner system of scoring, which interprets the test in terms of what factor (shading, color, outline, etc.) of the inkblot leads to each of the tested person's comments, is meant to address this, but problems of test validity remain.
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