Exner System: Rorschach Inkblot Controversies

Exner System: Rorschach Inkblot Controversies

Discuss why was the Exner system so revolutionary in the use of the Rorschach? Under what conditions might a Rorschach be preferred as a personality measure to another clinical personality assessment tool (e.g., the MMPI)?

A common misapprehension about the modern scoring of the Rorschach inkblot test is that the content of the projections of the respondent is the main focus of the scorer. However, the American psychologist John E. Exner created a highly standardized system in which "responses are scored with reference to their level of vagueness or synthesis of multiple images in the blot, the location of the response, which of a variety of determinants is used to produce the response (for example, whether the shape of the inkblot, its color, or its texture is primary in making it look like what it is said to resemble), the form quality of the response (to what extent a response is faithful to how the actual inkblot looks), the contents of the response (what the respondent actually sees in the blot), the degree of mental organizing activity that is involved in producing the response, and any illogical, incongruous, or incoherent aspects of responses" (Berger 2005). In short, the process of cognition is the focus of the analysis, not whether the respondent has more sexual than non-sexual imagery in his or her responses, for example. In terms of the benefits of a purely projective test, theoretically if only the projections are analyzed, the test-taker could project ideas onto paint splatters on the wall, and a therapist could subjectively analyze the subject's apprehension of formless space in that context. But the Rorschach blots are standardized, so the test can be subject to standards of reliability and validity.

The Exner system requires the therapist to be specially trained in a highly elaborate scoring system, dependant upon mathematical calculations that produce a structural summary of the test data. However, it must be cautioned that the test administrator's score alone does not determine the analysis of the patient. The therapist's summary is also compared with "existing empirical research data on personality characteristics that have been demonstrated to be associated with different kinds of responses," much as an objective test such as the MMPI will be compared with existing normative data. Both the calculations of scores and the interpretation are often done electronically (Berger 2005).

The Exner system was meant to answer critics of the test who noted that a projective test that had become highly influential had "low inter-rater reliability" between different graders (Berger 2005). While different scorers might have very different reactions to a subject that saw a bunny in one blot, for example, the use of color and white space was thought to be something more observable than opinionated. However, the controversy about the test is far from 'blotted out' by Exner's system. Despite its use in court-ordered assessments of mental stability and the fact that "a great strength of Exner's system was thought to be the availability of normative scores for various populations…beginning in the mid-1990s others began to attempt to replicate or update these norms, and found they could not" (Berger 2005).