The Rorschach Test Is More Accurate Than You Think 100 years after the inkblots were created, studies show they reveal something about us. IN A SMALL town in Switzerland in 1917, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach began carefully splattering paint on cards to study how the mind works. Asking people what they saw, he observed a correlation in responses from patients with schizophrenia and theorized that mental health could be assessed by how someone processes visual information. Rorschach’s original 10 images were published in 1921, the year before his death. After being brought to Chicago, they spread quickly across the United States as
Check out this great little interview NPR had with Damion Searls, author of the book, The Inkblots. In the book, Searls traces the history of the Rorschach test and the man who invented it. The Rorschach images have become something of a cliche over the years, and Searls believes that reputation is unfair. "A lot of people do dismiss them, but those dismissals are out of date," he says. Listen in to hear more and check out the book, it's a fascinating one for all Rorschach lovers.