ABSTRACT
The Rorschach Inkblot Method was created over 85 years ago by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist. In his youth, Rorschach had been adept at a popular parlor game of his day in which players competed to see who could generate the most interesting descriptions of inkblots made by dropping some ink in the middle of a piece of paper and folding it in half. Working in a large mental hospital after completion of his medical studies and psychiatric training, Rorschach became intrigued with the possibility that patients with different types of mental disorder might perceive inkblots differently from each other and from normally functioning people. He pursued this notion by developing a standard set of inkblots and showing them to a sample of 288 patients and 117 nonpatient volunteers, asking the simple question, "What might this be?"
