Ink Blot Tests

Have any of you been given an ink blot test for a dx?

I have...I don't feel good about it either, and I had no idea they still do those.

I didn't know, either, that ink blot tests were still used.

I've never had an ink blot test. Wish I did, though.

i did once in america. about 15 years ago.

short version ink blots in the USA are not used as diagnosis of mental disorders...

a bit of history....a long time ago someone spilled ink on their blotter (this was back in the days of quill and ink writing) the guy noticed some shapes in the spilled ink and asked others in his community what they saw. some people saw shapes and others did not. those that did see shapes, the shapes were related to what they did, or how they felt..

over time this spill some ink on a paper and see what you see turned into a game. some kids play it in schools and parents started teaching their children how to lay down look at the clouds and what do you see.

more time passes and psychiatrists discovered a pattern of projection. when a person looks at things and makes up a story or tells what they see, the object or story is something related to their life, their emotions...

psychiatrists started showing their patients ink blots just to see what their patients would say. there really is no right or wrong answer and many psychiatrists make up their own ink bot cards by buying ink or paint and splattering it on the cardboard cards, others actually buy pre made ink blots.

so if there is no right or wrong answer what is it showing. its just telling the psychiatrist that you like animals if you see animals, or you work is carpentry if you find tools in the pictures or you are angry if you see angry monsters in the picture....

when I did it one of the pictures looked like a messsy brain, where as the same picture to my wife looked like a kickball, someone else i know who saw the ink blots thought the same picture was a lemon. which is true they all are. I had witnessed a murder, my wife had played kickball with one of her clients and the lemon person is a beverage bar person who makes lemonade.

my point it doesnt diagnose anything just tells you and your psychiatrist what ever you want to project into it.

heres an example if you want to give it a try on your own...

take some water color paint and spill it on some paper. then through out your day look at it and see what shapes you see. what you see in that moment wil most likely reflect how you are feeling at that moment or what you are doing or thinking about ...at that moment....

thats all it is and does. it doesnt tell you whether you have alternate personalities or hallucinations or delusions or mania or any other mental disorder diagnostics.

The Rorschach test and derivatives of those tests are no longer used in the Netherlands at least, for diagnostic purposes. This is due to the unreliability of the test to which psychotherapists objected (they'd rather not misdiagnose, which can happen fairly easily with these tests).

I asked for one about ten years ago and my then therapist dismissed that test as being far too unreliable and by far not thorough enough.

Yes, I've never heard of Rorschach test actually being used anymore. My T spilt her coffee though once and I jokingly told her what I thought it looked like. She told me what she thought it looked like. We then laughed together about what Jung and Freud would have had to say about.

It was not for the main dx...but I'm not sure what is was for. The details are blurry...the two weeks I was there was blurry.

It's not used much now, but it was used here not all that long ago. And NO, psychologists did NOT make their own tests. And they did not just randomly interpret the test. The test was bought and ONLY sold to professionals and they had to make sure the real test could not be owned by anyone than professionals. The real test was never published in books etc. The interpretation is rather complex, and by those old means, they actually were spot on with some things, like how people with this and that issue see images. It is far from what you see, it is how you see it, if you see the full picture, if you include the white spaces, if you include colors etc.

It's not a very precise test but also I don't think it should be ridiculed by people saying that psychologists just splash color on paper and show to people. Especially people who claim to have studied psychology should not say those things. But I notice anyone can be a doctor on the Internet...

here is where you can find the very first time ink blots were used before it became the ink blot test for psychological use of projecting.

Paula Levine | Play Blotto

here is also a link of the brief history of ink blots.
Historical Development of Inkblot Technique

here is another link, it also has a video of them and what is the most ......frequent.... answers, by frequent this does not mean they are the one and only answers or that they are right. in fact if someone copies these identical answers the psychiatrist knows the person is lying..

for example todays world is not the hunting, skinning and saving animal skins that it was when this game turned into a test began. if a person has medical background the answers projected by that person into the test would be primarily medical, if a person is a mental health treatment provider their answers will most likely reflect their knowledge and feelings and experiences. a person who is a plumber took the test their answers would most times reflect their feelings, knowledge and experiences..

when I took the test shortly after witnessing a murder all my answers reflected that of my career and emotions / feelings about that situation.

The history of Rorschach's test

wanted also to elaborate on my statement that some places do make their own ink blots ...

for example in my location one of the activities at a workshop was to make our own ink blot tests based on our jobs, and the types of people we treat. in other words make the test fit todays standards not that of the 1920's.

another example of treatment providers in my location making their own ink blots is a play therapist that I know who works with many aged children. He made a set of his own ink blots to reflect different ages of the children, this way for example a non verbal child could point to a picture that will show the treatment provider what they are feeling.

many treatment providers in my location have ditched the ink blots from the 1920's for the more modern way of doing things by making their own.

mind you this is not for other locations for example I know in France and Germany on the rare occasions that they use this test of projecting your feelings into a card they do use the old version, one person that emigrated to my location said she was very intimidated by the treatment provider she had in Europe because she told them the first picture was a skeleton (she has eating disorders so every answer she gave was food related and body image related) and the psychiatrist asked her if she was suicidal. but when she came to america and her new psychiatrist used their own ink blot test, the psychiatrist understood right away she had eating disorders and her answers were reflecting how she felt about her own body.

my point is that some locations make their own ink blots based on todays standards and todays definitions, to find out if your own location makes their own or is still using the same ones from 1920's contact your own treatment providers.

I wasn't attacking the Rorschach tests, let alone ridiculing them... I was merely stating its obsolescence due to it being quite vulnerable for misinterpretation.

But then again, I believe every psychological test stands or falls with how the results are being interpreted. Even a modern, standardized questionnaire can have its results misinterpreted.

I always thought those were discontinued.

Since the set can be viewed online it is not used anymore. Also of course there are other reasons that it is not used.

I've gone to art therapy and there it is allowed to interpret anything anyway you like, including paint poured on paper. But that is usually not part of standard therapy, also that lacks the depth of the real test which takes in count more than the OBJECT you see.

Art therapy is not a test. It can be used to explore the mind sure, but it is not a TEST.

When I took the test it showed that I was schizoid. It was not just the absence of seeing people in the pictures and the immediate storytelling around the pictures, it was also based on which parts of the picture I used, if I saw the positive or negative image, if I took colors into count, which I did not do.

By the old standards I actually fitted right into schizoid. So in that way, the test was correct.

It was before mild aspergers (that I really have and not schizoid) was seen as a type of autism, you had to have very severe aspergers to be diagnosed. Since then the take on autism has changed.