The Column

Thursday, July 30, 2009

You might not be as crazy as you think


What do you see in this ink blot?

It doesn't really matter, anyway.

Now, it seems the old Rorschach test, lampooned along with the rest of the psychiatric industry for decades, isn't all that reliable.

So suggests the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, as reported by Newsweek.

Excerpt:

... psychologists Scott Lilienfeld, James Wood and Howard Garb—find the Rorschach wanting in two crucial ways .... first, the test lacks what testing experts call "scoring reliability." Scoring reliability means than you get the same results no matter who is scoring the test. Psychotherapists look at more than 100 different variables when scoring an answer: Did the patient focus on stray splotches rather than the main blot, or the white spaces instead of the ink? Did the patient interpret the color? That kind of thing. The PSPI review found that therapists disagree on fully half of these variables, making the scores unreliable for diagnosis ...

Which may or may not be good news for some ...



3 comments:

english said...

so I saw 2 chickens.... and a REALLY hairy face with his/her mouth open. WONDER WHAT THE HELL THAT MEANS??????????

Anonymous said...

Probably nothing. Unless Michael Moore shows up a lot in your dreams, in which case it means a LOT.

english said...

so happy to say he has NEVER been in any of my dreams......