Excursions in Rorschachlandia

Surveying the scientific and philosophical landscape of Hermann Rorschach's Psychodiagnostics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5016192
AutoresMarvin W Acklin (0000-0002-6613-9115, Department of Psychiatry John A. Burns Medical School & Independent Practice Honolulu Hawaii USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume59
Fascículo2
Páginas148-170
Data de publicação2023-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/jhbs.22235
PMID36511395
OpenAlexW4311238933
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas62

This article examines the milieu of Hermann Rorschach's Psychodiagnostics (1921/2021) under development between 1911 and his death in 1922 and explores new evidence about the direction Rorschach's test might have taken after publication of Psychodiagnostics. This includes direct and indirect influences from turn of the century continental philosophy and science and innovative colleagues in the Swiss psychiatric and psychoanalytic societies. The availability of newly translated scholarship, including the correspondence between Ludwig Binswanger and Hermann Rorschach following the 1921 publication of Psychodiagnostics, Binswanger's posthumous 1923 commentary in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and recent new translation of Psychodiagnostics, permits a fresh appraisal of the milieu and foundations of Rorschach's development. Understanding these sources and influences opens new vistas in reappraising the nature of Rorschach's "test theory" which Rorschach considered undeveloped at the time of his death. This paper presents new evidence that, under the influence of Rorschach's close colleague, Ludwig Binswanger, the Geisteswissenschaften and phenomenology might have figured prominently in future developments. The paper concludes that Rorschach, preoccupied with considerations of kinesthetic subjectivity in his innovative conceptualization of human movement responses, was a nascent phenomenologist whose untimely death cut short further developments in his theory of the test

Epistemology · Rorschach test · Sociology · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychological Testing and Assessment · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology