BOOK REVIEWS
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PSYCHODIAGNOSTIK. MeTHODIK UND ERGEBNISSE EINES WaHRNEHMUNG«-
DJAGNOSTISCHEN EXPERIMENTES (DeUTENLASSEN VON ZUFAILSFORMEN). By
Dr. med. Hermann Rorschach. (Ernst Bircher, Bern and Leipzig, igzi.
Pp. 174. Ten plates.)
This book contains an account of experiments on the interpretation of ink blots carried out on 405 subjects, including both normal indi- viduals (educated and uneducated) and patients suffering from a large variety of mental disorders. In these experiments attention is directed almost exclusively to the form (as distinct from the content) of the inter- pretations given by the subjects— these interpretations being subjected to a minute analysis, as the result of which the author draws a number of conclusions, which are in every case interesting and suggestive, but which are in many instances admittedly in need of further corroboration and which must be looked upon at present as hopeful indications for future research rather than as definitely established results.
The most important of these conclusions concerns an apparent correlation of two distinct groups of mental traits on the one hand with a relative preponderance (in the experiments) of kinaesthetic or colour influences on the other. Thus where kinaesthesis or colour appreciation predominates in the interpretation of the blots, we find respectively (p. 69):
Kinatiikesis Colour
Differentiated Intelligence. Stereotyped Intelligence.
More original productivity. More reproductivity.
More inner life. More outer life.
Stabilised aifectivity. Labile affcctivity.
Less adaptation to reality. More adaptation to reality.
More intensive than extensive rapport More extensive than intensive rapport
Moderate, stabilised motility. Excitable, labile motility.
Clumsiness and want of skill. Sldl] and dexterity.
Thus in the kinaestheHc class are found 'those who think for them- selves, the productive intelligences . . . Among the schizophrenics are the paranoid cases, patients who may indeed have more or less systematised ideas of persecution and grandeur, but who always exhibit a self-created delusional system. Paranoids may also be found in the other class, but these cases show hardly a sign of system in their delusions. Further, there are to be found on this (kinaesthetic) side such '
Kors^off cases as show a marked pleasure in confabulation. Thus on the side of predominant kinaesthesis there are collected all those subjects —both healthy and diseased— who live more in their own thoughts and phantasies than in the outer world, or a least those for whom "inner work" is more important than the process of adaptation to reality.
