A Brief History of Inkblot Tests
Psychological Inkblot Testing before Rorschach
Though the Rorschach inkblot test is the most widely known form of inkblot testing, the concept behind it dates back to the 15th century.
The history of the inkblot procedure is not easily traced. It is traceable only through Rorschach's own writing, and through the writings of Emil Oberhalzer, Walter Morgenthaler and George Roemer. Zubin, Eron and Schumer indicated that the concept of formless stimuli, used in inkblot techniques to stimulate the imagination, can be traced back to Leonardo Da Vinci and Botticelli in the 15th century.
Inkblots as Entertainment
It is important to note that in Europe during the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, there was much public interest in inkblots, not as a test, but more as a game. It was very common for inkblots to be used in a popular parlor game called "Blotto," where the challenge was to associate an image to a design. The design might well have been created right there, or taken from the many inkblots and similar designs appearing in contemporary books and magazines.
Early Inkblot Experimentation
More formally, there was in Europe and the United States considerable experimentation attempted with inkblots as tests of imagination, personality and intelligence. As early as 1895, Binet and Henri suggested that inkblots could be used for studying various personality traits, especially visual imagination. Dearborn, while working at Harvard University, published an article in 1897 that discussed the potentials of employing inkblot techniques in experimental psychology.
In 1848, Dearborn published the results of applying an inkblot technique to a group of 16 participants, wherein he used 12 sets of inkblots, each having 10 blots similar in nature. Tulchin also cites the pre-Rorschach work of Sharp, Kirkpatrick, Whipple, Pyle, Bartlette and Parsons, all of whom published material between 1900 and 1917 concerning inkblot methodology in the United States and England.
In 1910 in Moscow, an atlas for experimental research on personality was published by a Russian psychologist named Rybakow, who was a tutor at Moscow University. In the atlas, there was a test consisting of eight inkblots. All of them were asymmetrical. Rybakow indicated that her husband's decision to work with inkblots was stimulated by the observations of Konard Gehring, a teacher. Gehring discovered, while using inkblots displayed on very large sheets of paper at the front of the classroom, that certain children gave very similar responses to a variety of inkblots, even though the images were different in their form and color.
Psychological Experimental Period
Zubin and Eron described three periods in the history of inkblot use in projective testing. Artists who painted "indeterminate forms to simulate creative imagination" comprised the pre-experimental period in the 19th century. Binet introduced the "psychological experimental period" in 1895 with his assessment techniques, which measured imagination as an index of cognitive ability. Binet believed that a large number and variety of inkblot responses were a positive correlation to a "lively visual imagination." Other inkblot researchers hypothesized that conscious awareness was slowed by ambiguous stimuli, thus making the perceptual process accessible for research purposes.
The third historical period began in 1911 with Herman Rorschach's innovative research on "the interpretation of accidental forms." His interest in art forms and perception surfaced when he was a schoolboy. He was affectionately nicknamed "Klex" or "inkblots" by his peers. Roemer wrote that Rorschach's first purpose for developing an inkblot test was to investigate the participant's reflex hallucination through viewing inkblots. Cassell initially used inkblots to study the participant's body perceptions and somatic symptoms. Cassell extended his use of this technique to where the clinician could better hear the suffering individual's "inner cry."
While this information about the history of inkblots came from web research done in 2000, and the original source is no longer online, you can learn more about inkblots by visiting the Somatic Inkblot Society.
