Concerning the Current Status of Rorschach Assessment
Society for Personality Assessment Board of Trustees
The 2006 Spring issue of the Independent Practitioner included an article by Wood, Nezworski, Garb, and Lilienfeld (2006) critical of Rorschach assessment in general and the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) in particular. The article focused on three documents: a previous Independent Practitioner piece by Weiner (2005) on “The Utility of Rorschach Assessment in Clinical and Forensic Practice”; an Official Statement on “The Status of the Rorschach in Clinical and Forensic Practice” published by the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA) Board of Trustees (2005) in the Journal of Personality Assessment; and an American Psychologist article by Meyer et al. (2001) on “Psychological Testing and Psychological Assessment: A Review of Evidence and Issues.” The Wood et al. arguments and conclusions have been voiced by these authors on numerous previous occasions and been responded to many times. We believe that little purpose would be served by any further response to these same allegations.
We acknowledge the appropriate role of Wood et al. as critics, and their comments have in some instances generated research that has helped to document the psychometric soundness of Rorschach assessment. However, we do not consider these critics arbiters of what constitutes psychological science. We believe instead that psychologists and their students should weigh the available evidence and form their own opinions about the validity and utility of Rorschach assessment. To this end, we encourage IP readers to examine the three documents in question and decide for themselves whether the data they provide warrant the conclusions that their authors have drawn. The Official Statement is available at no charge as a link on the SPA home page (www.personality.org). The Meyer et al. (2001) article is available electronically to APA members (www.apa.org), and the Weiner (2005) article can be accessed through the Division 42 website (www.division42.org).
We would also like to provide readers with three items of information. First, Wood et al. (2006) suggest that the Official Statement of SPA is untrustworthy because it represents the work of a few Rorschach proponents, four of whom they name. In fact, the Statement was produced by the entire SPA Board of Trustees, all of whom participated in drafting it. The authorship accordingly includes the following persons, listed in alphabetical order, whose scholarly and professional credentials extend far beyond Rorschach assessment: Anita Boss, Virginia Brabender, Phil Caracena, Barton Evans, Stephen Finn, Chris Fowler, Leonard Handler, Radhika Krishnamurthy, Gregory Meyer, Joni Mihura, David Nichols, Bruce Smith, Irving Weiner, and Jed Yalof.
Second, Wood et al. refer to the Meyer et al. article as the “article by Meyer and his colleagues” and as “Meyer, Finn, et al.” as if to suggest that, as the work of Rorschach proponents, this piece also lacks credibility. In fact, however, the Meyer et al. article was prepared by the Psychological Assessment Work Group (PAWG), a task force that was appointed by the APA Board of Professional Affairs and, as indicated in the Meyer et al. reference below, included psychologists with little involvement in Rorschach assessment.
Third, Exner and Erdberg (2005, chap. 22) have recently published a new set of CS reference data properly collected by experienced examiners from a nationally representative sample of 450 adult nonpatients. These new reference data, obtained in what is by far the largest methodologically sound study of its kind, are strikingly similar to Exner’s (2003, chap. 12) previously published findings for 600 nonpatients examined between 1973 and 1986. With respect to the major CS indices of psychopathology, only 1 (0.2%) of the 450 nonpatients in the new study showed an elevation (PTI > 3) on the Perceptual Thinking Index; just 4.0% elevated on the Depression Index (DEPI > 5); 8.7% elevated on the Coping Deficit Index (CDI > 3); and 4.4% were positive for the Hypervigilance Index (HVI). Clearly, then, the Rorschach CS does not overpathologize by identifying any substantial frequency of psychological disorder in nonpatients adults.
References
Exner, J. E., Jr. (2003). The Rorschach: A comprehensive system. Vol. 1: Basic foundations and principles of interpretation (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Exner, J. E., Jr., & Erdberg, P. (2005). The Rorschach: A comprehensive system. Vol. 2: Advanced interpretation (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Meyer, G. J., Finn, S. E., Eyde, L. D., Kay, G. G., Moreland, K. K., Dies, R. R., Eisman, E. J., Kubiszyn, T. W., & Reed, G. M. (2001). Psychological testing and psychological assessment: A review of evidence and issues. American Psychologist, 56, 128-165.
SPA Board of Trustees (2005). The status of the Rorschach in clinical and forensic practice: An official statement by the Board of Trustees of the Society for Personality Assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment, 85, 219-237.
Weiner, I. B. (2005). The utility of Rorschach assessment in clinical and forensic practice. Independent Practitioner, 25, 76-83.
Wood, J. M., Nezworski, M. T., Garb, H. N., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2006). The controversy over Exner’s Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: The critics speak. Independent Practitioner, 26, 73-82.
