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Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship
GigsVT writes "Editors on Wikipedia are engaged in an epic battle over a few piece of paper smeared with ink. The 10 inkblot images that form the classic Rorschach test have fallen into the public domain, and so including them on Wikipedia would seem to be a simple choice. However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?"
I thought they made those randomly. If there are only ten of them, that seems to indicate that there are a few certain "correct" answers, which kind of throws the whole test into doubt now, doesn't it?
There, I fixed their complaint.
the Rorshach ink blots. Oops, it seems I have exposed them to the public, I guess the whole debate is moot now.
Seriously though, there are a million associative tests, I didn't think anyone even used the original Rorschach any more except to discuss it in beginning psychology classes.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Exposer to to pseudo-science renders it useless??? Now if we can apply that to Intelligent design?
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
If they are already in the public domain, won't the kind of people who would want to see them be able to see them? The fact that they might be on wikipedia could make it easier, but they will probably be on google -- which will make it only marginally more difficult.
I can hardly see how debunking what is in essence a subtle placebo as something that is unethical. In by that same stretch, debunking magic would be unethical. Pretty lame really. It's something almost 100 years old. For it to be phased out now due to there being far more accurate psychoanalysis is a good thing.
Everyone knows they're all pictures of boobs anyway.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
How hard would it be to just make ten new ones? Hell I could do it for them, fold a piss of paper in half and take a piss on it. Now you don't have to worry about it for my lifespan + 70 years. I'm just worried some overzealous wikipedia editors might try to kill me so it's released into the public domain earlier.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
If they're in the public domain, then they're in the public domain, and that ends it. I'm sure the APA can come up with some new, copyrighted ink blot tests. Perhaps they could involve images of Tom Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard in various disturbing poses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Here are some examples of ink blots, and patient reaction.
http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF233-Psychoanalyst.jpg
Isn't the main requirement that they be ambiguous, so that what the subject says is more related to their internal state, rather than the input?
was this test considered effective for anything?
Seriously - they have to have been in about a hundred movies. And all over the place.
Maybe it's time for the Psychological research people to join the 21st century and make some new digital inkblots?
The wikipedia page says it made it to public domain in 1992. Why exactly is this news?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
At least some of them showed up in "Big Secrets" by William Poundstone over 20 years ago. (Great book IMHO, though the sequels go down in quality as he scrounges for more secrets.) He also discusses what types of things are 'bad' to see in them.
Can't they just make more by pouring some ink on a piece of paper and folding it in half? I thought the point of these was what the patient in question thought they looked like, not the appearance of the actual ink-blot. I could be wrong though.
The tests were unreliable to begin with.
So now an unreliable test can't be used anymore.
The only one who loses is psychologists, which is no loss at all.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If these images are posted by wikipedia, they are rendered utterly useless. If one assumes that the chances are high that people will (now) come across these images elsewhere and it that could contribute to misdiagnostics, this is not only fine, it is the responsible thing to do.
Publishing them on wikipedia would go a long way into forcing people to produce a new batch of test images (preferably a thousand of them or so), which is the responsible thing to do.
"since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test"
They were ineffective the day they were invented. This is VooDoo science it's best, and public exposure of it as a sham is long over do.
This stuff isn't even being taught anymore.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It seems that the APA is the latest group that needs to do some reading on why security through obscurity just doesn't work.
Do a google search.
It seems that the stupid blots are already all over the internet so whether this association wants it or not, it has leaked, there's nothing they can do.
I see a Streisand effect coming though...
I went to the Wikipedia page and saw what appears to be ten pictures of vaginas. Is that why everyone is so worked up about this?
Giant carrot people drinking from bottles while playing musical instruments.
Where are you going?
Back to basement. Back to slashdot. Evil must be punished. People must be told.
Rorshach... you know I can't let you do that.
Huhhh... of course. Must protect Ballmer's new utopia. One more body amongst foundations makes little difference. Well? What are you waiting for? Mod me down.
Rorshach...
Mod me down!
If you want to know all about the ink blots, enter any public library and look at the psychology section (or get an inter-library loan if they don't have the specific books you need). If wikipedia wants to argue itself into irrelevance, why give a shit?
Where is my face!?!??!
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
squabbling over which marble is prettier.
Grow the fuck up. There are more pressing problems facing us.
And no, I didn't RTFA.
"Look at it this way... in a hundred years, who's gonna care?" - waitress from Terminator.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The website cited for being the source of the image currently at the top of the Wikipedia page is here, with its English counterpart being right here.
It includes all 10 Rorschach images.
Kid-proof tablet..
Perry Bible Fellowship is almost as good a cultural touchstone as the Simpsons... but goes places that broadcast TV isn't allowed.
Or is that just me?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I almost feel for the American Psychiatric Association. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of other people arguing that letting their pet item go into the public domain shouldn't be allowed, for various reasons. Mickey Mouse is, after all, a national treasure, and Disney just wants to conserve that special piece of history, it's really not about the money. We, the people, certainly could give the Rorschach blots some kind of special status via congress. But if we do, there will be a thousand companies trying to stretch that law to cover whatever they think there is some more money in, so I have to come down on the side of we shouldn't.
Who is John Cabal?
... because if they aren't on wikipedia, then nobody will ever find them on the internet and the images will be safe forever!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I used to edit Wikipedia a lot, and during that time, I saw a lot of these debates. This is nothing new, just a heated debate over whether to include an image (in this case the Rorschach test images) based upon ethics and Wikipedia policy (which there is actually very little).
/. index, there have been many other and similar debates like it, many having much larger implications concerning censorship on Wikipedia by recommendation of a 3rd party organization.
Essentially what will happen (or has already happened, I didn't read the whole debate), is that the definition of "consensus" will be called into question, as that's what runs Wikipedia, and is what decides these debates. However, the Wikipedia policy of consensus is so vague and non-standardized that many debates like this end without consensus, and can even escalate into an edit war, followed by admins having to step in. (which is one of the reasons why I no longer edit it)
I really don't see why this specific debate made it on the
While it may seem like a troll at first, the legitimacy of the test is questioned by other psychologists.
From the wikipedia entry:
The Rorschach inkblot test is considered controversial by some researchers for several reasons. Some skeptics consider the Rorschach inkblot test _pseudoscience_, as several studies suggested that conclusions reached by test administrators in the 1950s were akin to cold reading.
1) Two bugs on a flower.
2) A high five.
3) Two butlers tugging on a babies cradle.
4) Monster leap-frogging a fence post.
5) Bat.
6) Sheep's skin.
7) Two pregnant women.
8) Two chameleons climbing a bird feeder.
9) Two sea horses.
10) Two men with helmet touching, holding crabs in their far hands.
Did I win?
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test.
Which goes to show just how full of BS some psychologists are. Either the test is completely subjective and not dependent on the particular ink-blot pattern, so stop being lazy and make your own damned ink blots; OR some psychologists are depending too heavily on their interpretation of a Rorschach "test" during their practice.
As a physician I completely understand the subjective nature of psychoanalysis and I recognize its value in treating certain psychiatric disorders. However psychology is not entirely dependent on the Rorschach test and appropriate diagnoses can be reached easily without that test by any skilled practitioner, and anyone complaining about the diagrams being viewed by the public could also argue that all medical information should be with-held from the public. After all, we wouldn't want all those hypochondriacs and somatization disorder sufferers to get any ideas, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wait until the optometrists discover that Wikipedia is using an uncensored Snellen eye chart. Pssst! The big letter at the top is an "E."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Such as J.delanoy and Dominic who blocks entire ISPs from editing
July the 14th. Nerd carcass in the toilet, head stuck in the bowl. This place is afraid of me. I shit on its true face. The corridors are infested with loserboys and the putrid smell of their feces-encrusted pants soil the very air as I twist their arms out of their sockets. The accumulated filth of all their fapping to kiddie scat porn will foam at their waist and all the stupid geeks and nerds will scream "save us!"... ... And I'll whisper "fuck you, loserboys." And then I'll beat them up and shit on their faces.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
If the test depends on a particular and exact set of images that are decades old, then its worthless.
Publish the damned things.
NO SIG
so really crazy is a difference of opinion. if the 10 ink blobs are not random, then because you dont agree with what i say about what i think they look like and how i go about examining each so that i can make my decision, and if you dont agree with me.. give me a padded room with a view and feed me every day. thank you very much.
Wow! This whole "my business model is broken, please prop it up by legislation so I don't have to fix it" meme, is getting tedious.
I don't see anything...
am I dead?
I'm in grad school in a health-related field. I've had more than one professor tell me that the ink blot tests are no longer taken seriously because they are too subjective.
Who cares. I've seen them, so you can take them down now.
The earliest publication to the general lay public that I personally know of is their presentation on pages 118-127 of William Poundstone's book Big Secrets, Quill, 1983, ISBN 0-688-04830-7.
In other words, they were out there before the Web was a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye.
Anyone know of any earlier publications?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Back in college, my psyc prof spent some time going over those "personality" screenings and directly told us how to pass. He in effect, gave us the answer key (for those of us taking notes) on how to present ourselves via test results. His statements about how the scoring is done already invalidated the test. He also covered multi-colored ink blots and told us how to handle those too.
But despite what I know, every time I see an ink blot, I think "ink blot, symmetrical about [X,Y] axis." What's that make me? I don't see anything. Just ink on folded paper. I've stared at these things and my answer never changes. because you know, its still an ink blot.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If this was a government program and posting the details of the program online would render the program useless....we would not be having this debate.
So I say post away.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
If they are that important, perhaps they should have patented them?
Just a thought. After all, you can patent a ham sandwich nowadays, so it can't be too hard to patent something actually *useful*. And it would hopefully keep them out of the public's hands.
Then again, perhaps it's time for new inkblots. They did it once... Not like it's rocket science or anything...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Human being seem to always put their own short-term self-interest ahead of group self-interest, even when group self-interest is in the individual's longer term self-interest. There is no good reason to broadcast the Rohrschach test. Anybody who wants to do research can access it without any problem. Nobody else has any legitimate reason to access it unless they're being examined.
Nevertheless . . .
en tee
This test is no different than calling Miss Cleo in the late 90's.
If someone posted a detailed, in-depth article explaining how a polygraph works with the bottom-line of "the machine actually does nothing but draw on paper, its the interviewer who makes the decisions" would that article also be subject to censoring? If the public begins to view the polygraph as utter nonsense, wouldn't that also undermine its utility?
Anti-Polygraph
Taking a look through those blots without reading the descriptions below them, and I would get one set of answers. Then when I read the descriptions, I am surprised how almost EVERYONE of them *could* be interpreted to be sexual in some way. Some of the suggestions are obvious once you have read that description, but some are just odd. "A vagina in the middle of the blot" - when the area is a solid color... That's like saying you see vagina's when you close your eyes, or look at a wall that is a solid color. Seems to me psychologists are overly interested in sex and the people that may be like minded...
Psychologists used other means to diagnose people, then gave them the Rorschach test. They found correlations between certain diagnoses and certain types of answers or behaviors exhibited during the test. The Rorschach test is not a definitive test that will tell you unequivocally what specific mental issues you have. Like all psychological tests, it is just one tool among many that helps a trained expert make a diagnosis. For instance, if the Rorschach test says you are a psychopath, but you show a capacity for empathy and remorse, any trained psychologist will know that the test simply didn't work on you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hey! Who put CowboyNeal's photo in there?
Have gnu, will travel.
The Wikipedia intelligentsia won't even carry spoiler alerts, because that could lead to "censorship", and is somehow "hard to define" (seems like the word "reveal" would be the main tip to me, in the same way as "like" or "as" denotes similes). But then again, they were able to censor the journalist kidnapping stuff, since the ends justify the means. So, who knows?
There are elephants in EVERY ONE of those blots!
Are we concerned that someone with a mental illness will see the blots online and then later will not be cured because this one diagnostic tool isn't useful? You'd run the same risk with anyone who's seen more than one psychiatrist in their life. Perhaps if the psychiatrist simply asks each patient "have you seen these before?". If a modern doctor considers these inkblots their only tool, perhaps they should retire.
It's a test... I think publishing it online would be the same as publishing any other test online. If it's still generally or widely used, then the ethical implications should be the same as, for example, publishing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator online (trademark issues aside).
The MBTI Foundation's website lists what they consider to be ethical use. But this is opinion, and others might say there are no real ethical issues because it's simply a list of questions people can ask themselves.
The pictures have been around for a while anyway... and as already pointed out by many, it's a pretty bogus test with about as much science behind it as reading hot wax dropped in cold water.
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=rorschach+inkblot+test&aq=4&oq=Rorschach
within the top ten images posted.
Lame.
Move on.
Nothing to see here.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
and thought you were alluding to Magic being only 100 years old
and didn't know if I should call you a fool for your lack of history
or kick myself in the nuts for getting myself with the same stupidity
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
Because the shrink are lazy bums; too lazy to even come up with new ink blobs.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
See quote in signature.
Seriously, even without having searched for the blots previously, you just can't grow up without seeing a few of them in movies and such. So, if the test requires secrecy to work, it has failed a long time ago.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Would someone please mod up this simple post of someone who seems to actually understand what he's talking about. (I didn't realize it was so difficult to understand, but apparently, most slashdotters don't have a clue about psychology)
These are really cool, and quite beautiful. I think it'd be a shame to hide them from the public, simply from an artistic standpoint. Very pretty.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
It is ok to archive those pirctures, as long as you have taken all precautions to avoid too-easy exposure. For instance, the wikipedia's page should not include the pictures unprotected, but should rather use CSS to hide them with a click-of-a-button.
Those are just about the 10 nicest paintings of vaginas I've ever seen.
"Troll"?
Message for you: Is the subject of the Mona Lisa really happy, or just smiling for the hours/days-long portrait?
You be the judge.
Or was it my use of profanity that offended you?
Either way... you just reaffirmed my belief that the human species is, in the most part, stupid. So Be It.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Exactly.
Wikipedia's policy of having no "spoiler" mechanism has annoyed me for a long time. Yes, reading an encyclopedia entry about a TV show might refer to plot details, but I'm still not going to be amused if the introduction spoils the ending of the new series I didn't know was out yet in the first couple of lines. This is why just about every other TV review site or fan site wiki has some way of indicating that spoilers are ahead, if necessary with some reference to the particular episode(s) or series so those watching at different rates in different countries know. It isn't hard to do this, and many people consider it courteous.
The exact same argument applies to magic tricks, as mentioned by someone in an earlier post to this thread. How to do many popular illusions is public knowledge, and might even be helpful to aspiring magicians, but if someone looks up the name of a popular trick they might not want the first thing they see to be a diagram giving away the secret. It's not hard to hide such details by default but make them visible on demand. Heck, the mark-up structure on a site like Wikipedia is practically made for that sort of distinction.
And of course exactly the same goes for the Rorschach stuff here, solutions to common brain teasers, and many other things. Just because something is public knowledge, that doesn't mean everyone reading about it automatically wants to know everything.
Given all of this, the lack of a spoiler mechanism in Wikipedia just defies belief. It seems a prime example of how despite the overwhelmingly beneficial nature of community-driven sites, the collective ego of a few editors who want things done Their Way(TM) is still enough to make the experience worse for millions of others. For once, it would be nice to be proved wrong...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There is nothing unethical about releasing them. I have no trust in a system that old that hasn't been updated. Besides, just like funding the internet via advertisements; this group should find another way and let Wikipedia be free of their undue influences when opening this type of material to the public domain.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Well, that depends on what you call a "Rorschach test". Showing someone a bunch of inkspots and asking what they mean seems pretty much like "pop-psychology" to me. But that doesn't mean *anY* Rorschach test is bullshit.
For instance, ask someone: "How do you spell 'Rorschach'?"
If they do it correctly, you can say, with a high degree of confidence, that he or she has an excellent memory.
If they wanted it regulated they should have registered it as a medical device. They didn't, they copyrighted it and copyrights expire.
Remember that Freud came up with the idea that humans only act to fulfill two desires, sex (eros) and destruction (thanatos). For example, eating a hot dog makes one content because the nourishment means we can more likely procreate (eros) and because we destroy the hot dog (thanatos). That theory tells us a lot about what went on in his head...
However, the theory has been definitely disproven through the continued success of Slashdot - while it's certainly destructive to one's free time, nobody has yet to discover how annihiliating one's chance to get some caters to the eros.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Rumours on Slashdot about ink blot controversy. Talk of fighting amongst Wikipedia editors. They will cry out to me to arbitrate their edit wars. And I will say No.
Hurm.
I get a bit disturbed the continued mis-use of the word "censorship" Censorship is something governments do. Facebook telling you that you cannot post something offensive is not censorship. Slashdot deciding your story or comment is not worthy of publishing is not censorship. Apple deciding to not let pornographic image applications be sold on the the store is not censorship. And certainly deciding to not publish something because a useful tool would be rendered relatively useless is also not censorship. A news agency deciding (on its own) not to publish troop movements is not censorship. The US government telling it that it cannot would be. The difference is not subtle. There is no "right to know" or "right to have access to everything"
"The only thing the inkblots do reveal is the secret world of the examiner who interprets them. These doctors are probably saying more about themselves than about the subjects." (Anastasi, 1982).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Give the test to 100 people.
Have the 100 people do pre-screenings with psychologists.
Correlate the answers with clinical diagnosis.
It is *not* pop psychology, but anyone using it for anything other than a basic
litmus test is a quack.
I can't see the "Bat" one as anything except a bat since I've seen it in batman comic books; saw how he saw it as a bat.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So who cares about it. The full psicology thing is a scam.
GigsVT, can you post a picture of what you are talking about, please?
Open Standards Portal
Apparently they think the public is SO stupid that, the ones who are intent on dodging the test are uncapable of finding access to the test images even now.
there should be an elitism & down to earthness test for scientists to prevent such foolery of mind.
Read radical news here
looking at these images may reduce the quality of their practical applications in your life. proceed at your own risk.
#4 - 6 all look like shoes/boots to me. What does that mean?
The assumption here is there is actually something useful being destroyed. Just the fact that there is a way to correctly answer the test makes it suspect for usefulness because the tester will never know if the testee is faking. Just think how many androids would remain loose if they could fake the test.
Ten Vaginas!
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
1 pr0n
2 Children
3 terrorists
4 copyright
5 iphone
6 free/beer
7 grass-mud horse
8 Obama
9 ubuntu
10 NYCL
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm tired of evaluating art. I want to look at poetry. Anyone know where I can find works by Raymond Kertecz? He's my favorite poet!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Wikipedia could post the pictures "after the jump", and allow readers the choice to view them -- after reading a disclaimer that prior viewing could diminish their utility in therapy.
As long as they're throwing hissy fits about Rorschach tests, they might as well yank the article on eye charts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snellen_chart
Here,
E
FP
TOZ
LPED
PECFD
EDFCZP
FELOPZD
DEFPOTEC
I humbly await the eye doctors of the world to DMCA me.
the inkblot test is a pretty bad one. interpreting the meaning behind a patient's answers is completely up to whoever administers the test, thus making the results potentially very biased. i say, let's ruin it by publishing the pictures wherever we can. it has plagued the field of psychotherapy long enough.
weinersmith
Why couldn't more images be created, copyrighted, and used instead of (or in addition to) the original ten?
Also, isn't it *EXTREMELY* unlikely that any particular subject has viewed the original ten images on Wikipedia, and memorized a deceptive response?
Try mixing some of the original ten inkblots followed by some newly-created inkblot images. You will perhaps learn whether the subject has cheated (if their responses to the first group strongly disagree with the responses to the second).
We haven't found this whole test to be complete and utter rubbish by now? I can't believe that this thing has the scientific value of measuring the bumps on the heads of your patients I can't see how screwing it up by giving out the images to the public could possibly make a single bit of difference. They are random blots of ink, they show them to people. They compare the answers those people give to a set of answers given by a variety of other people. Seriously, that's the test, they might as well use chicken guts. The whole thing seems utterly ridiculous to me.
naked women. What does it mean?
This is the _perfect_ tatoo -- get to know your viewers.
Maybe I have bugs on the brain, at least two look like moths to me:
Moth, face with tongue out, suit /w red tie, lamp?, moth, upside-down shirt /w zipper, necklace, lady's body /w feathered boa/dress, seahorses on coral, fat little chinese dude with a hat
Of course, a more amusing answer might be "why do you keep showing me pictures of dead people, I didn't do anything!" :-)
And here i was thinking they wanted to remove the watchmen from wikipedia.... that aside, I don't think that te specified test has any bearing anymore, It may have worked upon its inception, but today, i don't think it holds true to its original purpose and design. my .02
seriously
Yes, I have taken it, I passed as "ok" . BUT, I guess I am not allowed to take it again (under the stated logic)
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Interesting... it never occurred to me. Then again, that's the glory of the Streissand effect isn't it? It brings up more questions and answers than most people would have considered otherwise.
This reminds me of polygraph testing and how just about anyone can be taught to beat them in a few minutes. Subjective measures of the psyche is shown time and time again to be marginally if at all effective. This is largely due to the tendency of medical science to "cut the head off of the body" when studying or treating people. The brain is a complex electro-chemical machine that relies on the proper functioning and balance of the rest of the body to work properly. A bad chemical or electrical balance anywhere in the body can affect the brain and "the mind" by extension. I find it utterly amazing the way scientists and doctors try to pretend the mind is separate from the body. Proper nutrition quite often reduces if not eliminates the effects of depression. What does that tell you? (I know that as far as I am concerned, one of the most important things anyone can do is eat a proper and well balanced diet! And even if I'm wrong, it certainly can't hurt.)
I tend to drift off-topic don't I? I guess I need to find these test images and study up on them... does anyone have a link and an analysis of "the right answers"?
Probably because the people who want to censor them thought they all looked under aged.
Ohhh.
If you answer 'inkblot on paper' to all ten, are you obsessed with inkblots?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Modern psychology is rather different from psychology in the first part of the 20th century
Amen! For example, back then there was no '1' in the current century number.
Also, if Tom Cruse says psychiatry is quack medicine, it's good enough for me!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Plate 1: An alien anteater with 4 eyes.
Plate 2: The skin cut off cookie monsters face.
Plate 3: Pelvis bone and butterfly in stomach.
Plate 4: A giant knocked flat on his back with a dragon's head escaping from his ass.
Plate 5: The rabbit from Donni Darko reaching out to hug me.
Plate 6: Bill the Cat
Plate 7: A beard I wouldn't be caught dead in.
Plate 8: Two wolverines climbing a stack of garbage.
Plate 9: The FreeBSD Demon plush toy
Plate 10: Panicked aliens running from a facehugger.
These were my first impressions of each. No attempt to get around them with trickery by reading what is expected to be seen.
So, where am I at psychologically?
My god we on /. are the most arrogant collection of bastard know it alls that have ever been assembled in one place. Pompous asshats all of us.
Why bother
Personally I think that Rorschach should be censored, he was the least likable of the characters in the whole comic and when his resolution came at the end of the story I though it was well done. But by all means censor the foul mouthed weenie!
Why bother
That's as good an excuse as any to paste this here:
NNPI (No Nonsense Personality Inventory)
[Author unknown - see "The Best of the Journal of Irreproducible Results"]
1. At times I am afraid my toes will fall off.
2. As an infant, I had very few hobbies.
3. Some people look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. Sometimes I think someone is trying to take over my stomach.
6. My teeth sometimes leave my body.
7. I think I would like the work of a hummingbird.
8. I have always been disturbed by the size of Lincoln's ears.
9. It makes me angry to have people bury me.
10. I believe I smell as good as most people.
11. Most people vomit out of spite.
12. Constantly losing my underwear doesn't bother me.
13. It is hard for me to find the right thing to say when I am in a room full of cockroaches.
14. I believe that halitosis is better than no breath at all.
15. Weeping brings tears to my eyes.
16. I believe in life after birth.
17. Some songs make me burp.
18. I never seem to finish whatever I
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
'm not saying a Rorschach test is crap. I'm just explaining why I think it's probably crap.
No you are right, it IS crap. If it is simply a tool to help divine the subject's mood or mindset, why use ink blots at all? Why not just show them a mirror and ask them to describe themselves? Or a front page of a news paper? Or talk about the weather? Any number of 'tools' could allow a quack, er psychiatrist a way of opening a dialogue with a subject that is tangential to the topic of mental health. If the whole point of the 'test' is to communicate with them in an indirect fashion and observe their reactions, there are many way of doing it that don't involve what is a widely know trope. One might actually say that BECAUSE the 'test' is such a widely know cliche, you won't get a unguarded response from a subject and is therefore a worthless tool.
I have met a few psychiatrists over they years. I wouldn't trust one further than I could throw em.
A psychiatrist is sitting in the park, eating lunch. A duck lands next to his bench, and waits for a handout. After a few minutes of being ignored, he quacks loudly at the psychiatrist . The psychiatrist says, "yeah, but the money is good."
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Destroying the Rorschach test as it exists today might be seen as a public service ...
http://www.division42.org/MembersArea/IPfiles/Spring06/practitioner/rorschach.php
Just use a different test.
"You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down... "
Oh no, now they'll have to make more inkblots!
A guy goes to see a shrink for some help dealing with his relationships. He's already done the ink blot tests, so the shrink tries a new version, drawn with straight lines in seemingly random ways, but also bilaterally symmetric.
To the first picture, the guy sees a naked couple on the beach. ...
To the second picture, the guy sees a couple taking a shower.
it goes on like that for a while, and the shrink ends by saying "You sir, are obsessed by sex."
The may responds, "Me, what the hell, Doc? You're the one drawing all the dirty pictures!"
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Screw the canonical Rorschak test. Let's roll our own. It's simple. You need: (1) 4x10 squares of Scott Tissue (2) One tablespoonful of Epsom salts dissolved in 24 oz. warm water. (3) A pen and a pad of paper. (4) Friends or patients as test subjects. Drink (2) as quickly as possible. When you need to use (1), fold each 4-ply segment into one square, apply, unfold and place aside to dry. Repeat until all Scott tissue has been used. Repeat (1) if necessary. Write a personal interpretation of each 1x4 ply Rorschak blot, and then square friends' or clients' interpretations against your own.
There is a reason why Psychology is part of an Arts major rather than a Science major. What did the psych major say to the medical student.. "Would you like fries with that?"
As a kid, I hated class and would often skip classes by hanging around the nurses office. In doing so, I incidentally memorized a fair chunk of the eye chart while killing time there. I can recite the top 6 or 7 lines from memory alone.
I'm horribly myopic. You know what kind of a pain in the ass it is to have an eye test each year when you know the answers going in?
What do you think the ink splotch is?
A completely bogus test that should be eliminated!
Good riddance.
The Rorschach has only ever been intended to be one part of a substantial toolkit for helping guide practitioners in understanding the mindset of people they are trying to help.
The interpretation of the test involves careful filtering of the subject's responses using a 1000+ page set of reference books that contain statistical data generated by tracking thousands of people with known states of mind at the time they were asked to respond to the images on the cards.
The test was re-normalized every few years (5-10 years) with brand new control groups, and the test references updated accordingly.
So we have a set of practices familiar anyone who has ever bothered to read anything about science:
1) Control populations rigorously selected for statistical validity;
2) Repeated experiments, statistically verified results;
3) Results of these experiments correlated with additional and separately valided personality measures.
I have given up many many weekend nights with my wife who spent hours poring over both the test responses and considering those responses against the statistical results from those books. Scoring the Rorschach alone was 4-6 hours; integrating the resulting data with the reults of the other tests, inventories and profiles was usually 12 hours; finally writing the report and validating that written report, point by point, against the original test results was usually another 12 hours. The measurements and interpretations are performed under strictly defined guidelines in order to produce a report based strictly on the information gleaned from multiple personality inventories, only one of which is the Rorschach.
And the only psychologist who begins a psychological evaluation wanting a particular outcome should be strung up. The first and last goal of any psychologist doing any of these *extremely* labor intensive testing procedures is easy to describe: Try to get as close as possible to the root causes that are interfering with subjects' abilities to live their lives fully, in order to be sufficiently informed to guide their treatment processes.
As with any population, there are incompetent assholes who walk into situations presuming that they know the story without bothering to listen first.
Maybe they want people to think they're concerned about ethics, it could be a psychological trick.
Better watch your back
***SPOILER ALERT!!!***
Digital Sailor
Oh no, now they'll be forced to used the much more refined, albeit more involved for the psychologist, Holtzman test instead. It's terrible that they'll have to use the newer test that was designed based on experience with the Rorschach test and addresses nearly all the controversies and difficulties surrounding it. The best excuse for sticking with the older and deeply flawed Rorschach test is lazyness.
A different approach to Inkblot testing was undertaken by Wayne Holtzman and his colleagues who developed the Holtzman Inkblot technique (HIT) to overcome limitations in the Rorschach. Unlike the Rorschach, which uses only 10 inkblots, the HIT is a more extensive set of 45 inkblots in the test series plus two practice blots. The inkblots were drawn from a pool of several thousand. While retaining the sensitivity of the Rorschach blots, the HIT is scored for 22 characteristics that can be objectively defined, reliably scored, and efficiently handled by statistical methods.
It is important to remember that the Inkblot test is only one of many tests that psychologists use to help them learn about an individual's personality.
http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/inkblot-perception.html
It is important to note that even the sources describing this newer and more extensive test acknowledge it is merely one in a large array of tools. Taking away the older and outdated version of it does not diminish the ability of a psychologist to diagnose a patient.
It is important to use the same images so as to know what to expect from the images. Animal face, mask, and demon may be common replies to a certain image. But if someone said blood splatter it would raise a flag that the psychiatrist would then know to ask more questions. Where as if it was a random image the ink blot might actually look like blood splatter from CSI, so their answer could be legit.
1. Two badger-mole-dolphins dancing with an evil crocodilian sorceress. 2. Two ladies kissing 3. Two guys hammering a bell. 4. A bat hanging upside-down, possibly with some weird beast's head. 5. A bat-butterfly 6. The Titanic. 7. A vagina 8. Badgermoles climbing up a chandelier. 9. Two ladies dancing 10. Scene from a battle under the sea with two sides facing off over a trench. The mutant lobsters are on the top, with two presumably dead sea horses in the trench.
The only reason it's still interesting is because there's historical data. Giving the same test to groups over many decades is interesting in that it helps to spot long-term trends. The MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, is like that. The definition of "normal" in the 1930s is rather different from the results today, and it's useful to see the trends.
Here's a classic "big secret:" Blaney's Ladder Levitation. It was first performed on TV on The Tonight show in 1973. It's still considered a "big secret" by professional magicians, but if you watch the video closely, you should be able to figure it out. Few illusions survive frame-by-frame examination.
It doesn't matter how much you masturbate over the supposed scientific validity of the test when your test is asking people what random images, if any, they see in a bunch of ink blots. Furthermore just because scientific processes are applied to something does not mean that the end result is scientifically valid.
The whole concept that the various physical resemblences someone sees in random images, results which could be influences by anything from what someone had for breakfast to what the test giver has in the room itself, could somehow predict pathology in anything but the most comically extreme of cases is laughable. Just as laughable as the belief that there are psychologists who do NOT walk into an evaluation with biases which can substantially affect the outcome of such a subjective test.
But... as with any population, there are incompetent assholes who refuse to accept that anyone disagreeing with them might have legitimate cause and instead are merely ignorant fools who don't know any better.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I don't care how much the "classical" psychologists want to keep it around... there are horror stories aplenty about how people have been involuntarily hospitalized over this subjective, nonsensical "test". I am amazed that in all of these posts, I only found one (other than my own of course) where someone actually stated that the Rorschach had been discredited.
Good riddance to a piece of garbage that has done such a terrible amount of damage to society and individuals.
Has the Rorschach test been subjected to double-blind tests, or hasn't it? If not, it should not be considered effective at anything until it has. [b]Can[/b] it be subjected to double-blind tests? If not, it should be considered pseudoscience and abandoned until it has.
(Oh, and citations to peer-reviewed reputable journals please, since you're the one arguing for effectiveness you'll need to provide evidence for it.)
HAND.
ANYONE who wishes to publish this information on Wikipedia has the right to do so because the information is correct, legal to publish, and unbiased(political speech or a sales pitch). The only time that Wikipedia's super-editors should ever censor a contribution is when it could damage their reputation for trying to provide legitimate information. If people can remember to keep this in mind then we shouldn't have to have such pointless debates in the future. As far as the Rorschach test goes, I simply doubt that it is important enough to protect it from scrutiny. Vagina in a blender.
Well...
IANAP but if you can see 9 cards just fine from the distance and then pick up one particular card to stare at it closer then yes, it does sort of hint at psychological differences...
Why can't they just have a warning before the images, like the "spoilers ahead" tags?
What octave range?
Or are you talking about haggis?
However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?
It seems to me that this is a fight over superstitions; the strength of the Rorschach test is not that here we have a set of carefully constructed, magical devices such as mankind has never seen before. The basic idea, if I'm not mistaken, is to get the subject to look at them and talk about whatever thoughts are inspired by them. The precise shapes are not important, and you can use any other device in the same way, eg. Tarot cards.
This is incidentally the way Tarot cards make it possible to "see the future" - everybody can predict things, it is just a matter of remembering and thinking about all the facts; by looking at a number of Tarot cards and trying to relate the symbols to your circumstances, you force yourself to think out of the box, thus bringing more of the things you already know into your conscious awareness, which gives you a better basis from which to predict things. Nothing magical about it.
Rorschach Blots, Xenu, the E-meter, Narconon...
Obviously Jesus Freud Lafayette has continuing copyright on all this material since he resurrected three days after his initial death, as stipulated under the 'bounceback' paragraph 148.3 of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act!
Now, for the real issue: when will Psycho-Analysts get tax exemptions like all the other snake handlers?
Except the answers of "everyone on the planet" actually depend more on their education and prior experiences, than on any kind of brain malfunction.
E.g., I can almost guarantee that an eskimo or a Touareg from Sahara are very unlikely to instinctively associate anything whatsoever with a butterfly, just because they haven't seen many. E.g., someone who's played a lot of WoW or is into classic mythology is a lot more likely to see half-human/half-animal figures, like, say, centaurs, without it involving any kind of alienation. It's just what the kind of thing they've been exposed to. E.g., at least one physicist saw an electron orbit (which actually is a lobed cloud, hence the similarity) in a picture, because that's the kind of thing _he_ deals with regularly.
That's really the kinds of RL answers that happen, not outright "I see mom chasing me with a machette."
So basically what we have again is taking the answers of a bunch of farmers and concluding that anyone who answers differently must be in some way broken. Or at least that's what the standard sets of interpretations tell us.
I.e., when it's not used as a prop for a cold reading, it's at best a test for mediocrity.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The whole Rorschach test cannot be rendered useless by the publication, since it has always been a bit of voodoo that's only good for making some people money.
Might be a pain in the arse to the psychologists but surely this *helps* anyone who has seen them. If you're being asked to take one of these test (I have never been in that position) then it suggest that they believe there is a *possibility* you could be psychotic etc. Thus, in any sensible (even psychotic) mind, it's only good sense to make the test fail. I fail to believe that they could ever possibly be a rigourous diagnostic tool anyway and thus this allows the following:
"Now, we're going to be taking an inkblo..." ..."
"Horse, fridge, man driving up a hill,
"Eh?"
"Rorschach, yes?"
"Yes."
"I just invalidated the results of your test, didn't I?"
"Well, yes."
"Good... could we have something a little more rigourous and bit less 'Hollywood' please, if you're going to be seriously analysing me?"
And if the analyst *doesn't* abandon the test at that point? That's probably a good ground for misconduct because even their own representative groups *say* that the test is useless if you've seen the images before.
Wikipedia vs Rorschach - irony meter to 11. Who should win? Who should care?
Some might have heard of The Battle of Poitier, or the Siege of Orleans, The Battle of Waterloo, or the Battle of Saratoga...
But those battles are all shadowed to be forgotten by the epicness of the Battle of Wikipedia!
... why don't they just abandon the static tests for ones that are randomly generated on the fly? They could just store a set of seed values for the generator and assign observations to them in a database.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I have memorized the 20/20 line of the standard eye exam chart. It's D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C. Does that mean they should hide it from the public so people like me can't "game" the system?
One of these is clearly 2 naked people. And the first slide looks like a billion horribly evil things. Two look like vaginas. One looks like an evil wizard.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Rorschach Test would be a fun one to fake. : ) What's it mean when they all look like "Satan"?
"Bellum est Pacis. Licentia est Servitus. Ignarus est Vires."
1 pr0n
10 NYCL
Psychologists the world over are thanking you for the research grants they're going to get for this new, as yet unnamed, mental illness! Perhaps they can call it "bilateral unipolar slashdot syndrome?"
Free Martian Whores!
How is this any different than a standard movie spoiler?
Solution:
Put the images under a show/hide section with an alert about the spoiler effect.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
The correct reaction to Rorschach tests has already been given away to the public.
Am I the only one to think back to that unforgettable Beavis and Butthead scene, where their reaction to sheets #1, #2, and #3 is :
... and then the therapist has enough to start writing notes.
Huh-huh, huhuhuhuh, huh-huh
Hehehe, huh-huh, hahahahahahah, huh-huh huh-huh !
WOW ! Huhuhuhuhuhuh, huh-huh, huh-huh !! Save some for later, dude !
I don't think I could ever give a sane response to a Rorschach test anymore, after having it 'spoilt' by the legendary series.
... reclines on the little couch thing, and the shrink starts showing him inkblots.
"What does this make you think of?"
"Sex."
Shrink pulls out the next card. "What does this one make you think of?"
"Sex."
"Hmmm." He pulls out the third card. "And this one?"
"Sex."
"You seem to be obsessed with sex..."
"What do you mean? YOU're the one showing me all the dirty pictures!"
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
One of my favorite Emo Phillips jokes goies something like this: Psychiatrist: OK, I'm going to show you some pictures. What does this one look like? Emo: That looks like standard pattern 47 in the Rorschach series to test for obsessive-compulsive behavior. (doctor gets angry) Emo: OK, it looks like a butterfly.
Psychologist != programmer
Psychiatrist != programmer
So by the rules of slashdot, they're the same thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Links to the images on wikipedia. Enjoy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_01.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_02.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_03.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_04.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_05.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_06.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_07.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_08.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_09.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_10.jpg
We have Lorem Ipsum generators - why no Rorschach generators? no SVGsplat?
If you can't get off that couch - get wireless
If the Rorschach is simply a tool for the person administering it to "better understand the patient's mental state in a way that doesn't allow them to employ the usual defensive responses" - then there's no reason to believe releasing a specific set of 10 of these ink splotches into the public domain would affect the outcome!
You're essentially saying it's just a way to show people a bunch of unique but meaningless splotches (vs. actual questions that a reader can perceive the "correct" responses to and tailor his/her answers to suit), so you can study their responses in a more "pure" way. That means you could accomplish the same things by presenting them with 10 different pieces of string in uniquely wavy or twisted patterns, or with 10 randomly torn chunks from a sheet of construction paper, or ?? The patterns themselves are insignificant.
tire tread on burst stomach.
I've been thinking about how to say this without upsetting the whole applecart... My wife made me promise on scou^H^H^H^Hprogrammer's honor never to reveal the dirty little secret of the psychology biz...
About a century ago, a guy with heavy viennese accent and a monocle claimed to be able to see into people's subconscious minds, seeing all the stuff about mothers and Oedipus, Electra, and subconscious sexual confusion that other viennese guy, Freud, was going on about.
The American psychological "community", being *entirely* over-awed by the educated accents and general erudition of their viennese masters, heard about his test, and in fact, several others. Whereupon they accepted the claims of these brilliant and erudite masters of the world of the subconscious mind *uncritically*, simply accepting what their masters said.
It dawns on me at this late date, in 2009, that the dirty little secret is out.
Graduate students, professors, postdocs in the field of psychology, are all absolutely different from researchers in every other field of endeavor. Where the typical academic pattern is for everyone to always be "challenging" their peers' hypotheses (or less charitably pissing on their ideas in an endless game of one-upmanship), that model breaks down entirely in the psychology biz.
Psychological researchers have none of that need to find every nitpicky imperfection in the fields' consensus views like every other researcher in the known universe, they simply accept whatever the monocled masters said back then.
Or maybe, psychology is much like every other field of academic study and researchers spent most of the twentieth century challenging the validity of the existing status quo, by testing every detail, and arguing about ad nauseam.
I'll leave it to you and Occam to fiure out which way it went.
All kidding aside, these people have spent lifetimes of study validating the extant theories and measurements. If they are anything like other fields of academic endeavor, up-and-coming researchers spent years poking holes in every aspect of the field's standard theories, explanations and techniques. That's why I referred to peer review.
There is a good chance that the first hypotheses of Rorschach and his buddies in Austria may have been only a first order approximation to the underlying reality. I believe, however, that the competitive habits of subsequent researchers drove them to work long and hard to move their understanding asymptotically toward a more genuine and deeper understanding of the underlying realities of people's state of mind, to improve the quality of existing measures, and to develop new ones with better predictive power.
Oh and by the way, most students of psychology hear about Freud's biography one way or another, largely due to his beginning the process of treating psychology as a field worth studying in an organized way, rather than being a bunch of blathering by people claiming to know about the human mind without proper supporting research. But his hypotheses have been either updated beyond recognition or replaced entirely by subsequent research.
And I do have some skin in this game. The fact is that I have great respect for the decade that my wife put into her postgraduate education, and the care that she puts into every aspect of her practice. She can be *very* cynical about orthodoxy (that's one of the many reasons I treasure our relationship), and believes practically nothing without seeing hard evidence of its efficacy. That makes my life hard when I try to convince her of my point of view in arguments... :-)