The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.53 (586 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0804136564 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-01-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
. Damion Searls has written for Harper’s, n+1, and The Paris Review, and has translated the work of authors including Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, and five Nobel Prize winners. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, NEA, and Cullman Center fellowships
And it is still used today.In this first-ever biography of Rorschach, Damion Searls draws on unpublished letters and diaries and a cache of previously unknown interviews with Rorschach’s family, friends, and colleagues to tell the unlikely story of the test’s creation, its controversial reinvention, and its remarkable endurance—and what it all reveals about the power of perception. Co-opted by the military after Pearl Harbor, it was a fixture at the Nuremberg trials and in the jungles of Vietnam. Elegant and original, The Inkblots shines a light on the twentieth century’s most visionary synthesis of art and science.. The captivating, untold story of Hermann Rorschach and his famous inkblot test In 1917, working alone in a remote Swiss asylum, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach devised an experiment to probe the human mind: a set of ten carefully designed inkblots. For years he had grappled with the theories of Freud and Jung while also absorbing the aesthetic movements of the day, from Futurism to Dadaism. A visual artist himself, Rorschach had come to believe that who we are is less a matter of what we say, as Freud thought, than what we see.After Rorschach’s early death, his test quickly made its way to America, where it took on a
Searls’s account of Rorschach’s afterlife is no less fascinating, as every culture that encountered his test seemed to project its own values onto it. —Lorin Stein, The Paris Review“A marvelous book about how one man and his enigmatic test came to shape our collective imagination. Searls uses this unlikely-seeming artifact to illuminate two histories, one scientific, the other cultural, both full of surprises. Hermann Rorschach, while tracing the strange half-life of his cards as they appear, Zelig-like, at key 20th-century moments. By the end, one feels that Rorschach and his test are the key to understanding the whole 20th century. Searls is a wonderful writer: funny, compassionate, and un
Psymansez said A well-written and learned book on the man, the test, and its proper use.. What can I tell you? I'm a retired psychologist and hated the Rorschach when I was trained in the late 1970s. Having read the book, I was fascinated by by the man Rorschach, and I learned a lot about the test itself and what could be interpreted from it, things I never fully grasped or believed in in earlier years. Fortunately, I don't think I ever used one after I got my license to practice, although I did a few test batteries to assess cognitive disorders, IQs, and memory problems in nu sing home patients. I provided p. Marvelous portrait -as relevant today as it was almost a century ago Bessel A van der Kolk Having done some scientific studies of the Rorschach and being intensely regretful about how little interest there currently is in these inkblots as a research tool I mainly read this book to learn more about this intriguing man who, like Mozart and Schubert, died in his middle thirties, and left a lasting legacy. It turned out to be fascinating portrait of the man and the method he invented. Hermann Rorschach was not a glamorous guy- he worked on the backwards of State Hospitals with chronic patients that his contempora. Fascinating! I am a Psychologist who used (and taught) Rorschach for over thirty years. I studied under Margarite Hertz at Western Reserve University. This book is an excellent biography and history of the Rorschach Psychodiagnostic. Fascinating, scientific, and well written to boot. Hard to pass up.