Symposium: Projective Testing in Ethnography

Abstract

OU have suggested to me that my own feeling about the Rorschach Test in anthropological field work ought to be set down in a communication to the ANTHROPOLOGIST, and since your suggestion is my command, I am happy to do as you suggest. Since Mensh and Henry (1953) have summarized most of the general problems that confront the anthropologist in using the Rorschach and other psychological instruments in exotic cultures, the reader is referred to that paper as basic to this discussion. General evaluation of the Rorschach Test as an instrument for the study of personality is outside my province, for such evaluation belongs to the specialists in clinical psychology. What I can give is my own opinion about its use in anthropological field work in cultures clearly outside the main stream of Euro-American culture. In this I include not only all so-called primitive cultures, but also the cultures of India, Japan, and China. Were I to go into the field tomorrow to study such a culture I would not use the Rorschach Test. Since there is no category of the Rorschach Test which is not in hot debate at the present time in clinical psychology, since there are many knotty statistical problems still to be ironed out, and since it is not possible to use the protocols without creating contamination effects, I would not know what I had once I had a batch of Rorschach responses. Furthermore-let us face it-I personally am opposed to anything that places an instrument between me and a responding human being. There is involved in this not only my personality, of course, but also the fact that a human being is one primarily and always in terms of his responses to other human beings, and it is there that his essential humanness is to be studied.