sonic-hip-attack:

It made up for the complete bullshit pop quiz our Assessment professor laid on us this morning.

I’m making enemies about the Rorschach in that class.  I questioned today whether it’s really ethically okay to violate confidentiality (as in, duty to warn/suicide risk) based on the multi-layered interpretations of Rorschach variables.

Because to me, the Rorschach lacks validity from its very foundation.  Yes, you can find some differences between groups of people with schizophrenia and people with no psychiatric diagnoses on some variables.  Sure. That makes sense.

But when it gets to adding up the responses people give in random categories and constructing an “Isolation index”?  Or when you judge the use of color someone reports in their responses as a measure of their openness to emotional experiences?  I just can’t.  

I don’t have the psychodynamic, magical construct of the human brain that is required to sign off on those leaps of interpretative faith.  

It’s too much work for too little payoff, scientifically speaking.  Yes, the test itself is quick, but the interpretation is complex and IMPOSSIBLE to explain to someone who hasn’t read a fucking textbook on it.  And I’ve read the textbook and I still can’t always tell you how we got from point A to point Zdf(3r+R+Bt/2+.5FC’).

Grawr.

I love everyone who does not love rorschach.