ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the category of impoverishment, define its constituent features, review relevant Rorschach characteristics, and bridge impoverishment in thought and speech on Rorschach to related developmental, psychopathological, and neuropsychological perspectives. Similar to disorganization and illogicality, impoverished thinking can be viewed along continuum of severity and associated conditions. However, unlike those other two categories, impoverishment may be product of broader range of factors. Impoverishment, derived from the word "poverty", means exhausted of resources and vitality, deprived of strength, and depleted of richness. When applied to cognition and language, it can be conceived both in terms of quantity and quality of thoughts, ideas, and speech. Such diversity in underlying causes makes it difficult to identify specific Rorschach scoring categories of impoverishment, less link these specifically to thought disorder. The chapter focuses again on vagueness and confusion responses because they are germane to discussion of impoverishment. Schuldberg and Boster's study of Rapaport's concept of "distance" helped clarify Rorschach features of impoverishment.
