Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Rorschach inkblot tests


The Rorschach inkblot tests have been put up on Wikipedia to the fury of the British psychiatric establishment.

The idea is that the psychiatrist puts the shapes in front of the subject one at a time and evalutaes the response by various criteria ranging from time to reply to whether the subect sees shapes, what shape (an animal, something human, an abstract etc), colour and so on as a measure of serious personality disorders such as bipolarism, schizophrenia, and milder disorders.

There is a correlation between 'intelligence' (which I suspect they mean academic ability) and personality disorder as indicated by the test, possibly because creative people give more, and more varied, responses, or possibly because creative people really are barmy.

I suspect that severe problems may well show up, just as they would in a conversation of any length, but am deeply sceptical about the detectionminor personality disorders. Papers are accepted in medical journals that would never get past the peer-review system used in science journals.

As an aside, my employer put me though a personality assessment test and announced I was a shaper - with the same personality as Margaret Thatcher.

Anyway, the pic at the top is a Rorschach inkblot test.

I looked at it and immediately thought: bioengineered aerospace fighter.

I am not sure what that says about me (but see John's Toy Soldiers for a possible explanation).


What do you see?