Table Of ContentThe Pennsylvania State College
The Graduate School
Department of Psychology
An Investigation of the Psychological
Meaning of Selected Signs on the
Rorschach Test
by
Hollis B. Farnum
A dissertation
submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
January 1951
Approved:
3*.
•
Associate Professor Psychology
^ 3 Cs ____________________
Heady Department of Psychology
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S
I wish to express my grateful appreciation to my
adviser, Dr* William U* Snyder, to Dr. George M* Guthrie,
to Dr. William M. Lepley and the other members of my
committee for their sympathetic understanding and help
ful guidance.
Dr. Lester Guest, Dr. Dean Clyde, and Dr. Philip
Ash gave generous and able assistance in planning the
statistical design for the study.
I especially wish to express my thanks to Dr. George
M. Guthrie for his generous allotments of time and as
sistance in all phases of the study.
Without the constant understanding, able suggestions,
and clerical assistance of my wife, Edith, the study
would not have been possible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION ............................... 1
II. SURVEY OF RELATED STUDIES ................. 8
III. PROCEDURE OF THE STUDY...................25
A. Design of the Investigation . . . . . 25
B. Subjects . . . . . ................... 26
C. Statistical Treatment of the Data . . 32
IV. RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION OF SIGNIFICANCE OF
THE NUMBER OF RESPONSES GIVEN TO THE ROR
SCHACH T E S T ............................ 34
V. RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION OF SIGNIFICANCE OF
RORSCHACH SIGN F c ...................... 45
VI. RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION OF SIGNIFICANCE OF
RORSCHACH SIGN C F ...................... 57
VII. RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION OF SIGNIFICANCE OF
RORSCHACH SIGN F M ...................... 66
VIII. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTED MODIFICATIONS . . 77
A. Conclusions .......... 77
B. Proposed Modification of Future Stud
ies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
IX. SUMMARY................. 84
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................... 92
APPENDIX I .............................. 98
APPENDIX II 102
TABLE UF TABLES
Table Page
I* Designation of Schools and Curricula of 199
of the 276 Subjects in This Study - . * . - . 27
II* Descriptive Comparison in Percents of Items
Answered "True" More Often by the Experimental
Group................ * * . * * ............. 29
III- Descriptive Comparison in Percents of Items
Answered "True" More Often by Hathaway*s Group 30
IV- Characteristics of Records Falling in the Top
and Bottom 27# of the Sample Considered on
the Basis of Total Number of Rorschach Re
sponses 35
V. Classification by Judges of Items Characteris
tic of High and Low Total-Response Groups on
the Rorschach - - - ........... 43
VI- Percent of Agreement Between Two Scoring Meth
ods for Computing Fc, for Three Groups Giving
Different Total Numbers of Responses - - - - 47
VII- Characteristics of High and Low Fc Groups
Matched for Total Rorschach Responses . . . . 49
VIII- Classification of Items Characteristic of High
and Low Fc Groups 56
IX- Characteristics of High and Low CF Groups
Matched for Total Rorschach Responses - - - • 58
X- Classification of Items Characteristic of High
and Low CF Groups 65
XI* Characteristics of High and Low FM Groups
Matched for Total Rorschach Responses - - - . 67
XII* Classification of Items Characteristic of High
and Low FM Groups 75
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Probably no single innovation in the field of psy
chological testing has gained more attention than the in
troduction of the projective technique for the study of
personality. The period since the middle 1930fs has pro
duced a sizeable volume of research in this area and many
new techniques which are based on the same fundamental
hypotheses. The projective technique was introduced to
meet some of the limitations of contemporary standard
ized objective tests. When these conventional objective
tests are employed it is presupposed that the personality
can be divided into a number of discrete traits. Through
standardization procedures a normal or average amount of
each trait is determined for a particular population. The
test is then administered to individuals and a measure of
conformity to the norms is determined. However, since the
purpose of the test is readily apparent to the subject,
what is obtained in many cases is a measure of the ability
to give socially conforming answers.
This approach to the measurement of personality has
several shortcomings. It is a little difficult to accept
the theoretical assumption that personality is merely a
summation of specific traits. In this concept trait inter
actions are not considered and the relationship of traits
to the total configuration is lost.
2
The additive concepts of personality, which assume
that personality is the total number of responses of the
individual, are no longer adequate. It is more accept
able to think of the organism as acting and reacting in a
field. The field is structured according to the interac
tions of the various parts and the organization of the
parts into the whole. The organization of the field is de
pendent upon interpart interactions and the relation of the
parts to the total configuration. Frank (15) conceives of
this as analogous to the action of iron filings when a mag
net is brought close to them. The filings will arrange
themselves according to inter-filing interactions and ac
cording to their individual relation to the magnet. This
organization constitutes the whole pattern, a product of
the interaction and not of the simple sum of the filings.
It seems likely that an adequate personality test must not
measure individual traits alone, but it must measure traits
in terms of their quantitative and qualitative interaction
and in terms of their relation to the total configuration.
At the present level of psychometric development a complex
goal of this kind may be wishful thinking, but the basic
sciences have already made inroads on this problem, and it
is conceivable that psychology can and will do the same.
The conventional personality test uses structured
verbal stimuli to present situations to the individual.
This raises an objection to them in that these verbal
3
stimuli are symbols which represent things, situations,
and past experiences to the individual. As such they
have achieved personal and social significance. Results
obtained from word association tests confirm this. It
follows that the same verbal items will arouse different
subjective experiences for different people. Thus the con
ventional forced-answer type test may eclipse individual
differences rather than measure them Insofar as the same
implications are thought to follow from the same answer
alternative for different persons.
A second shortcoming of the conventional type test
arises when the individual is asked to reveal various facts
concerning his unverbalized experiences which, normally,
society has caused him to suppress. In some cases he is
being asked to reveal attitudes which he is hesitant to ad
mit; in still other instances he may be asked to make a
self-diagnosis of which he is incapable. Furthermore, he
is sometimes asked to reveal conditions of which he is un
aware. These procedures make distortion of results not only
possible, but perhaps even probable.
The foregoing are among the primary reasons for the
development of the projective technique for personality
evaluation. The projective technique is based upon the
hypothesis that a given individual will interpret a stimu
lus possessing relatively little structure or conventional
patterning in a way characteristic of his management of the
4
various factors in his life. As the individual molds or
interprets the relatively unstructured field of projective
tests in his own personal way he reveals his idiosyncratic
organization of experience. It is important to note that
in the projective technique the individual places his own
meaning upon the stimulus material and not a predetermined
meaning assigned to the stimulus by the experimenter.
This appears to be a contradiction. A question to the
effect, "How can the experimenter interpret the subject's
meaning?" is legitimate. However, the apparent dilemma
can be solved if the response to unstructured material is
thought of as a "behavior relevant," and not necessarily a
"behavior equivalent." Since these two terms are not in
common use their particular meaning as used here should be
defined. A "behavior equivalent" is a sample of a larger
universe. For example, behavior on an intelligence test is
a sample of the individual's intelligent behavior, and this
sample is equivalent to the larger universe. A "behavior
relevant" is a sample which may be related in a predictive
sense to a particular universe, but is not a direct sample
of that universe. For example, from projective tests are
obtained certain behavior samples which may be related to
particular aspects of personality, but they are not neces
sarily direct samples of those aspects of behavior. An ex
ample drawn from the medical field may clarify the differ
ence more fully. In the Wasserman reaction a particular
5
type precipitant is indicative of the presence of syphilis;
this is a sign relevant to the presence of syphilis* How
ever, if a blood smear of the patient is analyzed and the
spirochete of syphilis isolated, this would be a sign
equivalent of syphilis* Returning to the original point,
the apparent dilemma disappears provided the experimenter
adopts as his task the investigation of the meaning of the
"behavior relevant" rather than considering the behavior
sign as a "behavior equivalent*"
Following this line of thought Goodenough (17) has
pointed out that the projective technique and conventional
test start from two different hypotheses and proceed in
opposite directions* The structured test technique hypo
thesizes a specific trait or set of traits or what might
be called a universe defined on an a priori basis* The
standardized test is a sample of that universe of behavior
included in the defined trait from which we make inferences
concerning the strength of the trait in a given individual.
On the other hand, by using the projective technique, cer
tain behavior samples are derived which may be termed
signs* The task is then to determine empirically to what
universe this sign or these signs are related* Hence, with
the standardized technique one proceeds from an hypothesized
universe to a specific sample of that universe in terms of
test performance; whereas with the projective technique one
proceeds from a behavior sample to an empirically determined
6
universe- However, with the projective technique, this
should be only the first step in the validation process.
Inter-trait and trait-whole relations must also be inves
tigated*
The foregoing discussion brings up the main problem
of this thesis- Up to the present time the majority of
investigators in the realm of projective techniques have
attempted validation by testing groups of known diagnostic
categories and then behavior signs characteristic of this
or that diagnostic category have been isolated- This is
probably a carry-over from validation procedure used with
conventional tests- It is a practical approach from an
applied viewpoint, but it tells relatively little about
what the specific behavior signs obtained from a projec
tive technique are measuring in terms of personal behavior
and personal interactions- For example, it has been found
that 25 or fewer responses on the Rorschach test indicate
psychoneurosis, but does this fact tell anything about the
psychoneurotic process of a particular individual?
It is proposed that a more useful approach in terms
of understanding the individual personality is to take
specific behavior signs and attempt to determine to what
characteristic or characteristics of personality they are
related- For example, if an individual gives 25 or fewer
responses on the Rorschach test, can it be determined what
this means in terms of the various personality processes
