What Do You See in the Inkblot? Intrigued by Freud’s and Jung’s theories, Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922) set out to develop a test that would reveal the contents of the unconscious. Rorschach believed that people were more likely to expose their unconscious conflicts, motives, and defenses in their descriptions of the ambiguous inkblots than they would be if the same topics were directly addressed. Rorschach published a series of 10 inkblots with an accompanying manual in a monograph titled Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception in 1921. Because he died the following year, Rorschach never knew how popular his projective test would become. Although the validity of the test is questionable, the Rorschach Inkblot Test is still the icon most synonymous with psychological testing in the popular media.

The Granger Collection, New York
Spencer Grant/Photo Edit