Rorschach and you

When we see clouds in the sky we can see figures that imitates things around us. What we perceive is a projection of what we know. Life goes on without mankind noticing but when someone notice it, it depends on what he or she sees.

Jack is an employee in a construction site and in his free time he likes to see people walking near the site and imagine what they are talking about or thinking, so he makes up dialogues entertain himself and others around. They all see the same thing, people walking and chatting if they are accompanied, but how each one of the workers and Jack interpret what they see is another story.

«So it can be derived that because of individual differences people may perceive different objects in accidental forms.»

Our lives are the same, we have the ability to see what is happening, but then, we like to interpret in our own way what is happening, like in the moves, we add subtitles to the scene. The problem, no all subtitles say what is really happening. So we end up with the wrong idea.

«…it is the mind of the individual which produces different set of associations to the accidental forms. This illustrates the point that the accidental forms can be used to study the mental functions of an individual»

Psychology studies human perception and the meaning of those perception, for example, Rorschach used inkblots to see what his patients are thinking and how they see life, if there is a disorder, obsession or a disability to treat.

«Every disorder like, schizophrenia, mania, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder have characteristic set of symptoms which are essentially deviations from the normal mental functions. Rorschach Inkblot Test is the standardized set of accidental forms which permits detection of changes in mental functions.»

As Jack likes to imagine what people think, as children we used to lie on the grass and watch the sky and see figures in the clouds and imagine what are they, then we could see figures changing before our eyes: the clouds turned to be an elephant, a dragon, a monster, a bear, a tree, etc.

«Children do come up with meaningful associations to the random inkblots. This popular observation confirms the assumption that unstructured and accidental forms elicit meaningful associations to the entire blot or the part of it.»

The total number of scorable associations produced by a subject to the inkblots is indicative of
productivity. A number of cognitive and emotional experiences can lead to departure from the average scored productivity:

A depressed patient because of psychomotor retardation, passivity, lack of interest in environment, hopelessness, worthlessness may produce less number of scorable associations to the inkblots.

Mania is the polar opposite of the depression and as such a manic patient because of flight of ideas and tendency to get involved in multiple tasks may produce excessive number of responses to the inkblots.

The schizophrenic patients because of stereotype thinking, withdrawal, decreased motivation, preoccupation, avolition, indifferent attitude to the environment may produce less number of responses to the inkblots.

In a person of superior intelligence, because of rich experience and above average concentration, memory, judgment, fund of information, there would in general be an increase in the productivity.

If a person is obsessed, because of an inner compulsion to miss nothing, such person may keep on associating to each and every part of the inkblot resulting in enhanced productivity. The feelings like anxiety, depression, disgust negatively affect productivity and the emotions like elation, euphoria increases the productivity. The productivity is also associated with the stress tolerance. The presentation of inkblots for association adds to the cognitive load of the subject. If a person has reduced capacity to tolerate stress, this would result in decreased total number of responses

Rorschach used 15 cards more often than many other cards. He collected the answers to the test from 305 persons, 117 of them non-patients, 188 of them were schizophrenics. He showed them the cards and asked the question: “What might this be?” Their subjective responses enabled him to distinguish among his patients on the basis of their perceptive abilities, intelligence, and emotional characteristics.

There is nothing wrong in imagining things, and see in our own way, what is important is that we are making this up, it is not real. Our imagination may get in the way of many things that happen or we think they happened. Just ask yourself if what you are thinking is really true, check the facts, see reality as it is, not as you think it is or you want it to be.