Refund and Reparation

Well, any time anybody can take kid inkblots that were invented back about 1860 — you drop a blot of ink on a piece of paper and then you smash another piece of paper down over the top of it. That's the first game. And you get an inkblot. And now the kiddies look at it and they say, "What is it?" and they guess what it is; because it makes a strange pattern. Now you take a white card and you drop some ink, then, in the  middle of this, and fold it good and tight. Squish, you know? And then you bring it out like that, and you look at the resulting pattern.

Now, that is a Rorschach inkblot! Was originally a child's game, and still is! Somebody goes to the university or some other pathological area and he studies for four years to learn how to interpret these things. And if anybody, however, has ever gotten a hold of the textbook, he can interpret in any way, shape or form that he cares to. And that's what makes it such a handy test, is it doesn't depend in the least upon the person being tested.

You always want several tests like this around. They lend to the authoritative atmosphere, you see? Requires super experts in that case.

Actually, the responses on Rorschach are supposed to be very standard from one type of insanity to another type, or one insane person to the next, or something like this and so on. Actually, there's the wildest response you ever heard of. And it doesn't coordinate against other types of tests, which makes it, of course, at once suspect. You take all the people in several insane asylums and you give them the test, and you take several people in a university and you give them the test, and you get what the difference is. And if the difference is undetectable you give it to several people out in the public and see if there's any difference again. Empirical findings.

All these tests do from our standpoint, by the way, is measure change.