Hermann Rorschach
Hermann Rorschach (November 8, 1884 Zurich - April 2, 1922) was a Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, best known for developing a projective test known, from his name, as the Rorschach inkblot test.
When he was in high school, Rorschach was called Klecks, or "inkblot," by his friends. Like many other young people in his native Switzerland, he enjoyed Klecksography, the making of fanciful inkblot "pictures." However, unlike other young people, Rorschach would make inkblots his life's work.
Like his father, an art teacher, Rorschach showed great talent at painting and drawing conventional pictures. When it was time for him to graduate from high school, he could not decide between a career in art and one in science. He wrote a letter to the famous German biologist Ernst Haeckel to ask his advice. The scientist suggested science, and Rorschach enrolled in medical school at the University of Zurich.
Rorschach studied under eminent psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who had taught Carl Jung. The excitement in intellectual circles over psychoanalysis constantly reminded Rorschach of his childhood inkblots. He wondered why different people often see entirely different things in the same inkblots. While still a medical student, he began showing inkblots to schoolchildren and analyzing their results. Rorschach wrote the 1921 book Psychodiagnostik.
The Rorschach Test is a projective method of psychological testing in which a person is asked to describe what he sees in 10 inkblots, of which some are black or gray and others have patches of colour. Responses are scored as to the location in the blot of the thing seen; the kind of stimulus characteristic emphasized--e.g., form or colour; and the content of the percept--e.g., animal. From response scores, the tester attempts to describe the testee's personality, often by comparing scores to established norms. Interpretation is not highly standardized, however, and though popular, the test has been attacked as being unreliable, even in the areas of diagnosis and prognosis in which it is most frequently used. The test was introduced in 1921 by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach. Similar tests have since been devised, notably one with two 45-card forms by the American psychologist W.H. Holtzman.
From Ellie: The Rorschach Test is a form of scrying or divination where images are determined by subjective analysis, and are not much different than any form of iconography.