Damion Searls

A fascinating story about a surprisingly enlightened mind. Whatever you may think about the tests themselves, the man was head and shoulders above Jung and Freud in thinking progressively about people (a low bar, I admit). And, unlike Jung and Freud, Rorschach would pass my "I'd let you into my house party, even though you showed up uninvited" test (you might be surprised by who would NOT pass that test). There is an earnestness, a kindness to him that truly took me by surprise. I found show more myself engaged with Searls' characterization of Rorschach much the way I would a beloved fictional character. The section on the test is almost like a different book (at least in the way I connected with it), but is still a very interesting read. show less

Hermann Rorschach, with a unique perspective on the world given his visual mind, invented a new way to probe the unconscious mind mainly as a tool to experiment with Jungian personality types. What he found was the relatively simple set of images and a corresponding analysis methodology opened up so much more - including diagnosis for severe psychosis, or even the potential for future breakdown. And as a change from Freudian psychoanalysis, this methodology was quantitative, even correlated show more to other diagnostic tools. But asking a question like "What do you see" is ripe for interpretation, leading to the fatal flaw of the inkblot test: the open-ended responses must be graded to get the quantative analysis, so are subject to bias or misinterpretation, or just the desire of the examiner to poke into the "meaning" of the responses themselves.

Searls' book is part biography of Rorschach and part story of the birth and rise of the inkblot test, peaking in the US with the WWII draft, absorption into pop culture, and eventual discredit as the test fractured into different versions based around the same images. It's an interesting, and surprisingly deeper than expected, look at this tool and the ideas behind psychological testing across the 20th century. show less

This is so much more than I anticipated, more intense, in depth. I was not aware that there are “officially” only 10 inkblots used in Rorschach’s tests and that “most of the Rorschach blots we see in everyday life are imitations or remakes,” that “even in academic articles or museum exhibitions , the blots are usually reproduced in outline, blurred, or modified to reveal something about the images but not everything. “ So secretive, sacred were these cards before their show more copyright expired and the internet took hold. Now, they are as main stream as an emoji. (There are 7 included in this book, along with photos of the dashing Rorschach, his family and some of his other later paintings.)
The belief that “you can manage what you want to say but you can’t manage what you want to see” has negated many an applicants attempt for employment after acing every test but the blots. Fascinating! But what I found most interesting is how such tests can still be referred to everyday life, as in our media reports. You see what YOU see and that is your truth.

And so we go into his early years, his birth in 1884 and events alongside. His father was a painter, his mother, a doting, fun-filled woman with both combined to make their children’s lives enjoyable and successful to adulthood. And we follow him, in great visual and dialogue through to such. His schooling, his early practice, his many successes and earned accolades, some of his cases/patients. This book has so much information, so many elements, that it would take me a book itself to highlight them. Suffice it to say that this is an exceptional biography, spanning (it feels) every day in the life of Rorschach.

When it got into the psychology of the cards, I did get lost a time or two, not knowing the lingo, but none of the book was written in a “scholarly” fashion, more so that anyone could read, enjoy and learn from its contents. We DO have the internet, after all, so look up the “Zipf curve” and read on!

Bravo, Searls. This is a book I will read again and again. show less

This is a fascinating book about a hugely interesting subject that we all recognize but don't think about very much. I really love that this book goes beyond the standard popular biography stuff of narrativizing the life of a person. That's fine, i suppose, but I am really more interested in the test itself, and the second half of this book is essentially a biography of the test, which is very cool. Searls does a great job of dealing with the implications of the test and what it reveals show more about psychology and perception. show less