by Anthony D. Sciara, Ph.D., ABPP and Barry Ritzler, Ph.D., ABPP
The Rorschach Comprehensive System as developed by John E. Exner, Jr., Ph.D. has been the predominant system in use for administration, coding and interpretation of the Rorschach since shortly after its inception in 1974. Dr. Exner died in 2006 leaving Rorschach Workshops, the legal rights to all his writings, and all his files to his family. While Rorschach Workshops still continues to sell his books and forms, there is no psychologist in the family to continue research, writing, and publication of new information.
This article will look at the impact his death will have on the Comprehensive System (CS). For whatever reason, Dr. Exner did not appoint a successor. The lack of an identified successor to continue CS research has left a leadership void. There is a current initiative by some psychologists to develop a new system for use with the Rorschach. This plan for the development of a new system will be discussed along with how the CS will continue to grow and change in the future.
Click here to read the entire article: Rorschach Comprehensive System: Current issues
Barry Ritzler and Anthony Sciara
In December, 2007, a supplement to the Journal of Personality Assessment was published with the stated purpose of “…provid(ing) CS users with a compendium of country-specific or locale-specific norms…” (Meyer, Erdberg, & Shaffer, 2007, p S201). Even though this statement indicates the motivation behind the Supplement was to establish a set of country-specific or locale-specific norms, the editors, in their conclusions manuscript state that “…these projects also introduce the possibility of creating a composite set of international norms…” (Meyer, Erdberg, & Shaffer, 2007, p. S201)
It practically goes without saying that this is a legitimate project in that collecting norms for different countries and cultures is an important undertaking. The development of a set of norms that are country or culture-specific is meaningful in that they may increase the strength of the Comprehensive System (CS) in multiple sites. We commend the amount of effort that went into these projects and the concerns the investigators demonstrated regarding important issues of reliability and correct procedures for using the CS. A general result from these studies is well worth noting: i.e., there is remarkable consistency across most of the international studies. The editors of the Supplement emphasize this consistency and Ritzler (2004), the first author of these cautionary notes, has also suggested that this international consistency is an indication that the Rorschach method is relatively culture-free. Nevertheless, there are some difficult-to-explain differences, especially those between studies from the same country reported in the Supplement. Furthermore, we are concerned that some of the consistency across nations may be the result of methodological deficiencies that we will discuss in this manuscript.
Anthony D. Sciara, PhD, ABPP
In 1966 Weiner, Exner and Sciara published an article “Is the Rorschach Welcome in the Courtroom?” [1] The article reported on a survey of almost 8000 federal and state court cases in which psychologists presented Rorschach testimony. That survey revealed in only six cases was the appropriateness of the Rorschach challenged and in only one case was the testimony not admitted. The conclusion of the study was clearly that the Rorschach is welcome in the courtroom. That study is now 14 years old and a similar study should be initiated to explore if there are different rates of acceptance now.
Click here to read the entire article: THE RORSCHACH COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM USE IN THE FORENSIC SETTING