Pls.
I am Mrs TEMA JOHNSON from kuwait .I am married to Mr PASCAL JOHNSON He worked with kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2005. We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against.

When my late Husband was alive he deposited the sum of $3 Million (three Million U.S. Dollars)in one of the international Banks here in Abidjan. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a church that will use this fund for orphanages, widows, propagating the word of God and to endeavor that the house of God is maintained.

The Bible made us to understand that lessed is the hand that giveth I took this decision because I don have any child that will inherit this money and my plenty of relatives are not Christians and I donwant my our efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace. I don need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband relatives around me always.

I don want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank here in Abidjan,and you’ve to contact them for onward transferring of the fund to your destination. I will also issue you an authority letter that will prove you the present beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shephard. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that Wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth.

Please always be prayerful all through your life.Contact me on the above e-mail address and any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church for this same purpose.

Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein.

Hoping to receive your reply.

Remain blessed in the Lord.

Yours in Christ,

Mrs TEMA JOHNSON

This is the only decent article I’ve read on this subject and the only comment section that wasn’t a boatload of pure stupid (you can see why I blog anonymously). Anyway, good work and thanks.

I’m more concerned about those individuals who -don’t- wish to cheat on the Rorschach test, but who are simply inquisitive people who will read about the test, not realizing they are robbing themselves of the opportunity to have a pure assessment done, one that is free of contamination from priming. By priming, I mean that once you are told what to see in these ambiguous stimuli, you can’t help but see that particular shape. (And they really are ambiguous. They are just formless ink blots. People simply have a tendency to “find” shapes of animals, people, and objects in these ink blots, even though these things aren’t really there.)

To give an example of this priming, look at inkblot #6 (which is now readily available on Wikipedia). The common responses for this are “animal hide, skin, rug.” Looking at the plate, you can easily see the animal hide/skin/rug, right? What if I told you that I see a vagina (which is another “common” response that isn’t overtly listed on the Wikipedia entry)? Can you see it? I’m betting most people can see it now that I’ve pointed it out. And I’m sure some people already saw it before I mentioned it. But my concern is for those people who didn’t? Now that I’ve mentioned it, every time they look at this card, they’ll likely see a vagina instead of or in addition to the animal hide/skin/rug. And now that the common answers have been provided for all the ink blots, people who have visited the Wikipedia entry will now likely see the common responses in the ink blots, since they’ve been told (primed) what to see, even though they may have seen something entirely different! “Common” responses does not mean that everyone sees the same thing. But now people who may have given different answers may have their potentially unique or unusual responses squelched because of this priming. And if people, aware now of the priming effect, try to compensate for it by forcing themselves to find something else within the ink blots, that is simply screwing up the test in the opposite direction.

Thus, I think it’s a shame that the inkblots and their common responses have been posted. It isn’t a matter of cheating or money or prestige. It’s simply the fact that the test itself is predicated on people never having seen these ambiguous stimuli before and being able to share their in-the-moment responses to seeing these ink blots for the first time, so that their counselors and therapists can get a better sense of their clients and provide better counseling for them. But now these ink blots are no longer ambiguous to the people who have been primed, and the test is worthless as an instrument for these people.

If the PsyD in the US affords you the title of “Dr.” then my apologies. I should address you properly, Dr. Grohol. As mentioned previously, we do not have the PsyD system in Canada and, although I am aware of it, I really do not know the intricacies of the designation. But I should err on the side of caution and respect and address you as Dr. Grohol.

Others have already posted a number of valid points so I will not repeat them. But I will stress one critical issue that I did not see when perusing this site:

Namely, the Exner system relies heavily on RATIOS/PROPORTIONS of certain types of responses. With more and more information added to wiki, anybody can easily “fake” a number of responses which, while not enough to make someone’s profile look entirely different from what it should be, it can significantly affect his/her profile.

Since one cannot say for sure whether that person had been exposed to the wiki page, one should not infer that the respondent’s answers necessarily reflect such exposure, even if they likely do. So what should a psychologist do if the person’s history, presentation and results from other parts of the test battery were highly inconsistent with their Rorschach profile?

Again, wiki contains enough information for someone to say things that would create too many inconsistencies WITHIN their profile. Proper testing and report writing should not contain such inconsistencies. And it is important to note that the courts give far more credence to standardized Rorschach results as opposed to a psychologist’s idiosyncratic interpretation (which I doubt any court would respect in this day and age). So what should a psychologist do in this case?

He/she could either throw out the Rorschach results or try very hard to somehow interpret them in a way that makes them consistent with the rest of the data. The former option is why many of us are concerned about Heilman’s actions. The latter option is why many people criticize projective techniques as being highly subjective and susceptible to the psychologist’s own conscious or unconscious decisions, rather than a standardized scoring system such as the Exner Comprehensive System.

Kidding not!

I missed your response yesterday.

Katrin

There is nothing more fascinating than seeing, not what psychologists and psychiatrists disagree upon, but HOW they disagree upon it.

You are correct in that most patients/clients do not have “cheating on their mind”. For most people, they would never know if or when they would ever be given the Rorschach, if any psychological instrument at all.

Those individuals who are apt at trying to “cheat the system” are individuals who, for example, are involved in child custody cases in which a psychological evaluation is not uncommon. There are a number of websites that exist solely for the purpose of helping individuals in different types of evaluations for any number of purposes in the hope that sharing this “secret information” (and Dr. Grohol is absolutely correct – you can buy any number of books with ease that contain prints of the cards along with interpretation data) will help them look “normal”, “sane”, or whatever optimistic word you want to use.

However, people fail to recognize that the Rorschach (or any other psychological instrument) by itself is pretty useless. It needs to be given in the context of a battery of tests, with the results integrated with a variety of other sources.

Yes, the Rorschach is a projective test, and as was stated by Dr. Wood, it is a fairly well normed test as far as projective tests go (and even to some degree, objective tests). There are no “right” or “wrong” responses on the Rorschach, nor are there any “horribly wrong answers”, thus I do not understand why people would bother trying to memorize “common” responses. If you truly understand the scoring of the Rorschach, “common” responses will only take you so far.

While sharing of projective test data may not hurt the field, I fail to see how it can actually help any individual who wanted to cheat or game the system. In fact, I see it likely backfiring on them more than helping them. I also do not think people are going to be running around with print outs of the cards asking their friends what they see (the “amateur” argument).

However, per the APA Ethics Code, “[P]sychologists make reasonable efforts to maintain the integrity and security of test materials and other assessment techniques consistent with law and contractual obligations, and in a manner that permits adherence to this Ethics Code.” Posting of the cards online (and possibly even part of the cards) is a direct violation of this code.

I doubt that most patients have cheating on their mind. It never even
to me.

I also know that the more intelligent a person is, the higher the likelihood he will score higher on the psychopathic scale on the MMPI.

Like, a ‘normal’ person has never felt ’suicidal’!

Patients are idiots. Got it.