美国国家公共电台 NPR How Hermann Rorschach's 'Inkblots' Took On A Life Of Their Own

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Most of us probably haven't been subjects of a Rorschach test, a psychological test in which you're asked about ten standard images, called inkblots. But all of us have probably heard something described metaphorically² as a Rorschach test, something that elicits³ a variety of interpretations⁵ depending on whom you ask.

The Rorschach test has become a cliche⁶. The man who developed it, Hermann Rorschach, is a lot less well-known than his test or the metaphorical¹ uses of it. Damion Searls' new book, "The Inkblots," sets out to remedy that. Welcome to the program.

DAMION SEARLS: Thank you.

SIEGEL: First, who was Hermann Rorschach?

SEARLS: Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychiatrist⁷ and artist. He was born in 1884. He became a psychiatrist. He studied under Carl Jung, among other people, in Zurich. But at the same time, his dad was a drawing teacher, and he was a very visual person.

SIEGEL: Now, he developed this set of ultimately 10 symmetric images. What did Rorschach find or claim he could do with these inkblots?

SEARLS: Well, he started off being interested in them as a perception experiment - in other words, not a test at all but just a way to study how people see things. And then he started realizing that people with different kinds of personalities⁸ were seeing things differently and that he could use these images as a real test.

SIEGEL: Here are two statements. This is like a psychological test. Which one is more true - one, Rorschach's inkblots still play an important role in psychological testing, or two, the inkblots are dismissed by most mental health professionals today as pseudoscience, too subjective⁹; they're no longer taken all that seriously?

SEARLS: A lot of people do dismiss them, but those dismissals are out of date. And if what you want to follow is sort of the latest scientific empirical evidence, you'd have to say the Rorschach works. The real test is not that if you see a bouncing bunny, you're the good twin and if you see an axe¹⁰ murderer, you're the bad twin. And if you see your mother, boy, you're really in trouble.

SIEGEL: There was a 2003 book called "What's Wrong With Rorschach?" in which the authors presented a blind study which Rorschach had done. He would read another psychiatrist's descriptions of a patient's answers and do a diagnosis¹¹ of the patient or evaluation¹² of the patient. But in this case, the subject of the test was described as scoring very high on the depression scale, very bad at personal relations, and it turned out to be the book's co-author, who in addition to being a Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist with a Yale Divinity degree - he said he suffered from no depression, whatever. I mean if a test is wrong let's say 10 percent of the time, does that invalidate the utility of a psychological test?

SEARLS: I don't know. I don't want to be put in the position of the scientist defending it. But the scientists who actually write the articles have shown that if it's administered properly, that it works. It's also never given by any responsible person as a single thing. In other words, if you see one snake with a mustache on card number 4, well, then to the loony bin¹³ with you.

SIEGEL: You're right at one point that Hermann Rorschach practiced psychiatry¹⁴ at the beginning of the 20th century, a time when not only was psychiatry coming of age, but so was abstract art. The link between abstract art and the inkblots, it turns out, is not coincidental at all.

SEARLS: That was one of the things I was most surprised and kind of excited to run across in writing the book because if you look at it from a psychology¹⁵ point of view, the Rorschach test seems kind of out of left field. If you think about Freud and Jung, they're focusing on words. But in the 19th century, there was work done in psychology on how people perceive things, and that was seen to be a psychological issue.

And so there's this idea that, how can we connect to things visually if they're not people? You know, if we look at a crying person, then we might feel sad, but if we just look at a harmonious¹⁶ painting or a sunset, how can we feel any emotion? There's nothing to connect to. So there was this idea that empathy, which was a term invented at that time, is the way that we connect to things that we see.

And one of the things I was amazed to discover is that the person named Robert Fisher, who sort of came up with that theory that really fed into the Rorschach test, Freud, in "The Interpretation⁴ Of Dreams," both sighted the same person as having been the inspiration for their ideas - this man named Scherner. Karl Albert Scherner wrote a book about the soul and about how when you dream about a house with the door falling off, it has to do with your teeth and, you know, all this kind of stuff that led into Freud. But his main point was that the mind, whether asleep or awake, transforms things symbolically¹⁷.

Modern psychology and abstract art are close cousins with this idea that what we're doing when we go about the world and seeing things is not just taking in what we see but sort of putting something of ourselves out there. That's what's key to both the Rorschach test and to the modern abstract art that was being invented at the same time and place.

SIEGEL: The abstract art is imposing¹⁸ less objectivity on us. It's not forcing us to a reaction. There's more work on our part to imagine that reaction.

SEARLS: Right. Most people would say the idea of abstract art is that, you know, how can it be anything if it's just a rectangle? Well, it can be something because viewers connect to it.

SIEGEL: Damion Searls - his book "The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, And The Power Of Seeing" comes out next week. Thanks for being on the program.

SEARLS: Oh, thank you very much.

1 metaphorical   

a.隐喻的，比喻的

参考例句：

• Here, then, we have a metaphorical substitution on a metonymic axis. 这样，我们在换喻（者翻译为转喻，一种以部分代替整体的修辞方法）上就有了一个隐喻的替代。
• So, in a metaphorical sense, entropy is arrow of time. 所以说，我们可以这样作个比喻：熵像是时间之矢。

2 metaphorically   

adv. 用比喻地

参考例句：

• It is context and convention that determine whether a term will be interpreted literally or metaphorically. 对一个词的理解是按字面意思还是隐喻的意思要视乎上下文和习惯。
• Metaphorically it implied a sort of admirable energy. 从比喻来讲，它含有一种令人赞许的能量的意思。

3 elicits   

引出，探出( elicit的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• You might find that a sympathetic approach elicits kinder and gentler behavior. 你或许会发现用同情的方法，可引出更友善及更温和的行为。
• It presents information, shares ideas and elicits emotions. 它展示信息、流思想和抒发情感。

4 interpretation   

n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理

参考例句：

• His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
• Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。

5 interpretations   

n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解

参考例句：

• This passage is open to a variety of interpretations. 这篇文章可以有各种不同的解释。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The involved and abstruse passage makes several interpretations possible. 这段艰涩的文字可以作出好几种解释。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 cliche   

n./a.陈词滥调(的)；老生常谈(的)；陈腐的

参考例句：

• You should always try to avoid the use of cliche. 你应该尽量避免使用陈词滥调。
• The old cliche is certainly true:the bigger car do mean bigger profits.有句老话倒的确说得不假:车大利大。

7 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

8 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

9 subjective   

a.主观(上)的，个人的

参考例句：

• The way they interpreted their past was highly subjective. 他们解释其过去的方式太主观。
• A literary critic should not be too subjective in his approach. 文学评论家的看法不应太主观。

10 axe   

n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减

参考例句：

• Be careful with that sharp axe.那把斧子很锋利，你要当心。
• The edge of this axe has turned.这把斧子卷了刃了。

11 diagnosis   

n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断

参考例句：

• His symptoms gave no obvious pointer to a possible diagnosis.他的症状无法作出明确的诊断。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做一次彻底的调查分析。

12 evaluation   

n.估价，评价；赋值

参考例句：

• I attempted an honest evaluation of my own life.我试图如实地评价我自己的一生。
• The new scheme is still under evaluation.新方案还在评估阶段。

13 bin   

n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件

参考例句：

• He emptied several bags of rice into a bin.他把几袋米倒进大箱里。
• He threw the empty bottles in the bin.他把空瓶子扔进垃圾箱。

14 psychiatry   

n.精神病学，精神病疗法

参考例句：

• The study appeared in the Amercian science Journal of Psychiatry.这个研究发表在美国精神病学的杂志上。
• A physician is someone who specializes in psychiatry.精神病专家是专门从事精神病治疗的人。

15 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

16 harmonious   

adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的

参考例句：

• Their harmonious relationship resulted in part from their similar goals.他们关系融洽的部分原因是他们有着相似的目标。
• The room was painted in harmonious colors.房间油漆得色彩调和。

17 symbolically   

ad.象征地，象征性地

参考例句：

• By wearing the ring on the third finger of the left hand, a married couple symbolically declares their eternal love for each other. 将婚戒戴在左手的第三只手指上，意味着夫妻双方象征性地宣告他们的爱情天长地久，他们定能白头偕老。
• Symbolically, he coughed to clear his throat. 周经理象征地咳一声无谓的嗽，清清嗓子。

18 imposing   

adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的

参考例句：

• The fortress is an imposing building.这座城堡是一座宏伟的建筑。
• He has lost his imposing appearance.他已失去堂堂仪表。