Meyer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, who has studied the Rorschach, said admonishing psychologists against using the tests was ''not in the spirit of advancing our science.'' They ''have been used for a long time very effectively, with very good results and a great deal of scientific support,'' he said.ĭr.
Lilienfeld and his colleagues do not really understand how clinicians use the tests, Dr. Weiner, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the University of South Florida and the president of the International Rorschach Society, who said the authors of the journal report took research findings out of context to bolster their case.ĭr. Lilienfeld said that the review was written to raise awareness of the problems with the tests in the legal field and with ''the hope that maybe we can reach a small number of open-minded people, and in particular students, who have yet to make up their minds on this issue.''īut he added, ''I'm confident that many will take issue with our conclusions.'' They recommend that practitioners refrain from administering the tests for purposes other than research ''or at least limit their interpretations to the very small number of indexes derived from these techniques that are empirically supported.''ĭr. The tests, which often take hours to score and interpret, add little information beyond what can be gleaned from far less time-consuming assessments, the psychologists say. While the Rorschach and the other projective techniques may be valuable in certain specific situations, the reviewers argue, the tests' ability to diagnose mental illnesses, assess personality characteristics, predict behavior or uncover sexual abuse or other trauma is very limited. The test taker's responses are assumed to reflect underlying personality traits and unconscious conflicts, motives and fantasies. The three tests are known as ''projective'' because they present people with an ambiguous image or situation and ask them to interpret or make sense of it.
Howard Garb of the University of Pittsburgh, appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a publication of the American Psychological Society. Wood of the University of Texas at El Paso and Dr. ''The research continues to suggest that they are not as useful for most purposes as many clinicians believe.'' Lilienfeld, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University and the lead author of the article. ''There has been a substantial gap between the clinical use of these tests and what the research suggests about their validity,'' said Dr. and the Draw-a-Person test - are seriously flawed and should not be used in court or the consulting room. In the article, three psychologists conclude that the inkblot test and two others commonly used - the Thematic Apperception Test or T.A.T. The debate is likely to become even more heated with the publication of an article provoking discussion and anger among clinicians who routinely use the Rorschach.