The splat is out of the bag: a first-ever look at the making of the Rorschach test

The ink blots have been used as a diagnostic tool for 100 years, but the making of new ones, every five years, has been a closely guarded secret – until nowFor images that have been reproduced for more than a century and looked at, quite intently, by millions of people, there is a great deal of secrecy surrounding theRorschach ink blots. These famous cards – both intensely guarded and instantly recognisable – continue to be used for psychological diagnosis around the world. New copies are only printed every five years or so, and no one has ever been allowed to document the process. So when I asked the publisher recently if I might do so, I had not expected them to say yes. There were conditions, of course: the most perplexing of which was that if I were to document the printing of the Rorschach ink blots, I must do so without revealing any information about the printing of the Rorschach ink blots. It seemed a test as exquisitely elegant as t he one for which the cards themselves are used.The ink blots are named after Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychologist who died so young that he only makes it halfway throughhis biography. One Sunday in late March 1922 he is taking his wife Olga to see Peer Gynt at the theatre and a week – five pages – later he’s dead. He had been born in Zürich 37 years earlier, the first of three children – two boys and a girl – to Philippine and Ulrich. His father was an extremely skilled artist and wrote a 100-page treatise titled Outli...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Culture Psychology Photography Art and design Source Type: news