Psychobook: Games, Tests, Questionnaires, Histories - Julian Rothenstein (2016)

Chapter 2. Inkblots

Inkblots

From Leonardo to the surrealists, artists have been aware that arbitrary stains, blots, and marks can provide the basis of imaginative pictorial experiments. The great novelist Victor Hugo, a remarkably original draftsman, was fascinated by inkblots, and valued them as mysterious signs. It took the brilliant young Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach (possibly inspired by Justinus Kerner’s fantastical drawings) to realize that a set of systematized symmetrical inkblots might form the basis of a revelatory projective test. His book, Psychodiagnostik, elaborating the idea, was published in 1921. Rorschach died the following year at thirty-seven years of age.

Victor Hugo, photographed by Etienne Carjat, 1876

Inkblot by Victor Hugo, date unknown

Page from Justinus Kerner’s Klecksographen, 1890

The Ghosts of My Friends

First published in London in 1905, The Ghosts of My Friends was a popular variation on the autograph album, in which friends were invited to write their signature “with a full pen of ink” along the fold of the page, then close the book to create a symmetrical blot. The results are poetic, comic, and, sometimes, slightly sinister.

The Rorschach Inkblot Test

A patient taking the Rorschach inkblot test, USA, ca. 1951

Hermann Rorschach, photographer unknown, 1910

Above and on pages 59-63: original Rorschach inkblots

What Do You See? What Does it Mean?

Study the inkblots on pages 66-70, then refer to pages 182-83 for commentary and feedback.

Turn to page 182.

Turn to page 182.

Turn to page 182.

Turn to page 183.