New Rorschach Performance Assessment System

[FadedC]

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Regarding where the rorshach is used, I have a school psych adjunct who runs a highly succesful neuropsych testing center who includes the rorshach and other projectives in her reports (along with about 30 other tests). She is one of my universities biggest defenders of projective testing as she says she has tested children whose schizophrenia would never have been detected by other methods.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Regarding where the rorshach is used, I have a school psych adjunct who runs a highly succesful neuropsych testing center who includes the rorshach and other projectives in her reports (along with about 30 other tests). She is one of my universities biggest defenders of projective testing as she says she has tested children whose schizophrenia would never have been detected by other methods.

Really?

I think these type of assertions are a slippery slope, particularly in regard to the psychotropics that almost always follow a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Yikes.

 

[aequitasveritas]

Thanks. I'll check this out over the weekend. Did they examine special populations like TBI, dementia, substance abuse, stroke, etc? I'm curious because there is a much higher incidence rate of these types of population being involved in legal cases.

Those populations are not in the manual as far as I know. There are studies regarding Ror variables for those populations, however, which would apply to the R-PAS since it uses basically the same variables as the CS.

What it does have is Complexity adjusted scores. So u'd know how much engagement and mental energy someone put into the responses, whether they were open or constricted, and the scores adjusted for that response style.

 

[FadedC]

Really?

I think these type of assertions are a slippery slope, particularly in regard to the psychotropics that almost always follow a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Yikes.

Well the individuals taking the tests showed some incredibly disorganized thinking that my professor claimed was not present on other tests and which cast the other results in a new light. Having looked at their responses on the tests in question I would have to agree that they were pretty significant, the story telling on the TAT for example quickly devolved to a point where the child's sentances didn't even make sense and showed a questionable sense of reality. Whether or not this was truely something that could not be found from any of the other 30+ tests she gave, I really can't say.

 

[Neuropsych2be]

Regarding where the rorshach is used, I have a school psych adjunct who runs a highly succesful neuropsych testing center who includes the rorshach and other projectives in her reports (along with about 30 other tests). She is one of my universities biggest defenders of projective testing as she says she has tested children whose schizophrenia would never have been detected by other methods.

On practicum I had many cases where psychosis was missed by the MMPI-2 and PAI and by the treating psychiatrist until it came out on the Rorschach. I frankly don't get the objections are about the Rorschach. I love the test *because* its deeply idiopathic and allows one to get a glimpse into the unique ways the client processes these stimuli. The purpose of the Rorschach is not to get a diagnosis but to infer aspects of that person's phenomenological experience. In my opinion, no battery is complete unless it includes measures derived from both the nomothetic and idiopathic traditions in psychology. This is one reason why I love the very different Rep-Grid developed by George Kelly.

 

[WisNeuro]

I'm having a hard time buying the "Psychosis was only discovered using the Rorschach" argument. There need to be some fairly concrete symptoms in place for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. Symptoms that should be able to be ascertained without any testing, projective or objective. I'd buy touching on some subtle schizotypy with the Rorshach, but not diagnosable levels of Schizophrenia.

 

[FadedC]

If your going by the case I was talking about, it was the TAT, not the Rorshach, not that it would matter for your argument. In this particular case the child had plenty of other symptoms and substantial impairment. It was just hard to narrow down exactly what the disorder was. My understanding is that with young children it's not always easy to narrow down exactly what complex symptoms they are or are not experiencing.

Anyway I'm just relating the opinion of one of my professors, I don't necesarily share it. As a point of contrast another of my professors is strongly psychodnyamic and has been giving projective tests for ages, but yet she says that it's rarely told her anything useful, and when it has it's always been something she already knew from other sources.

I'm having a hard time buying the "Psychosis was only discovered using the Rorschach" argument. There need to be some fairly concrete symptoms in place for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. Symptoms that should be able to be ascertained without any testing, projective or objective. I'd buy touching on some subtle schizotypy with the Rorshach, but not diagnosable levels of Schizophrenia.

 

[cara susanna]

Now that I've given/scored/written up a few Rorschachs and TATs/CATs, I have a *lot* of issues with them. Don't think I'll ever use them voluntarily when I give assessments.

My biggest issue is the Rorschach needing more than one response per card to be valid. I feel it forces people to make up stuff because they know that I can't let them go with only 10 responses.

 

[Neuropsych2be]

I'm having a hard time buying the "Psychosis was only discovered using the Rorschach" argument. There need to be some fairly concrete symptoms in place for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia. Symptoms that should be able to be ascertained without any testing, projective or objective. I'd buy touching on some subtle schizotypy with the Rorshach, but not diagnosable levels of Schizophrenia.

That's exactly the situations I dealt with while on practicum where the cognitive slippage and disordered thought processes were not overt and was more subtle. In my opinion, using psychological testing to diagnose schizophrenia is a poor use of psychological testing.

 

[phillydave]

Here here!! The Rorschach is not a projective test in the Exner system. It is distressing to hear doctoral level students and psychologists who should know better referring to this as a "projective test." Today it is regarded as a cognitive perceptual task which can be a rich source of hypotheses about the client. Many of the indices have good predictive validity. Sadly the nature of the task does not allow standard estimates of reliability to be easily computed. It is ironic that some psychologists eschew the Rorschach as being a poor diagnostic instrument as compared to the MMPI-2 or PAI. Yet the more "reliable" diagnoses these more objective measures supposedly give and the supporting research are based on an overarching diagnostic system (the DSM-IV) that has absolutely no established validity whatsoever. Oh the irony!🙂

Thank you. Yes, this ^

You saved me several minutes of typing.

 

[Markro311]

Not sure if this was already posted at some point, or if people were aware, but all the inkblots can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#cite_note-107

Included are typical responses, and what each card may provide information about. Certainly this cannot be good.

 

[KillerDiller]

Not sure if this was already posted at some point, or if people were aware, but all the inkblots can be found on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#cite_note-107

Included are typical responses, and what each card may provide information about. Certainly this cannot be good.

Yeah, I remember a thread on that a couple years ago when those were first posted. If memory serves, it quickly devolved into an argument over the validity of the measure. Personally, I think that regardless of one's opinion on the Rorschach, it's a slap in the face to psychologists when someone publicly "outs" the specifics of a measure we use. It's disrespectful of the authority we have to control our own tools. I also don't buy the "freedom of information" piece in the slightest. Should we post the answers to the upcoming SAT on wikipedia too? Information should be free, after all 🙄.

 

[FadedC]

Interestingly enough the Wikipedia rorshach link also has an entry on the controversy around their posting it. According to them the rorshach images are now public domain and can be used by anyone for any purpose. Says a lot for how long they have been around for. I wonder if the images on the TAT have moved on to public domain as well.

 

[aequitasveritas]

there should have been a lawsuit and this should be taken down

 

[FadedC]

there should have been a lawsuit

Well if the rorshach slides are public domain, then I'm not sure who could file suit against them.