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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?"
The test is, and always has been, pop-psychology nonsense. It's a cold reading in a phony clinical setting. The diagnoses is always "more costly therapy sessions".
This is like the association of soothsayers trying to supress the "secret" of tarot or tea leave reading, because if everybody knows it wont be magic anymore.
You're wrong. The Rorschach test is not, nor has it ever been a tool for identifying what's wrong with you. It's a tool that allows the person administering it to better understand the mental state of the person they're dealing with in a way that doesn't allow them to employ the usual defensive responses. It further allows them to identify what major pathologies might be present, but does not provide a diagnosis. You're essentially implying that any tool which doesn't offer a full-blown diagnosis is akin to superstition and should be discarded.
By that logic, a stethoscope is a useless tool, since it never provides a complete diagnosis, but a set of data points that can be applied to one.
That _was_ funny ... and also true!
My mother is a retired school psychologist, so I got to be the guinea pig for all of the tests she was learning to administer. By the time she got around to learning Rorschach, I was in high school, so I tormented her by sneaking a peek at the scoring rubric before she gave me the test. The basic approach to being declared unstable was to simply obsess on any given concept - it didn't need to be anything particularly grisly or perverted. Butterflies would do just fine. I took my Mom three images to catch on to what I was doing, and we both had a good chuckle.
What a crock!
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
I don't think it's an issue of whether or not the tool provides a full-blown diagnosis. I think it has to do with what the tool measures.
A stethoscope doesn't provide a diagnosis...it just allows the user to hear things that normally can't be heard. It's not subjective at all. The effectiveness of the stethoscope can easily be measured and confirmed. The sounds the stethoscope pick up (typically heart beats/breathing - I'm guessing?) have been *proven* as a useful diagnostic tool.
That's to say, it is possible to hear an abnormal heart beat. Or to hear congestion in the lungs. We (as a scientific community) understand how sound works and we know that some things make sounds; and if we hear a certain type of sound, we know it must have a certain of cause. If the cause of the sound is in your lungs and it's a sound that shouldn't be, we know it's a problem.
The problem most people have with the Rorschach test or 'tool', however you want to word it - is that it doesn't measure anything. It's some pictures. They don't do ANYTHING.
You can show them to someone and then interpret their answers and use that to help show you the state of mind of the person answering. But, we (as a scientific community) still don't understand the inner workings of the mind. Someone's answers are highly open for interpretation. Even if we can agree that a certain type of answer or behavior while answering is 'abnormal', we don't know what causes it.
With a stethoscope - you can say, 'This sound....it's almost always the result of X'. With the Rorschach pictures...you can't.
So, a lot of people don't see the benefit. And if the benefit is something like, 'Well, the highly trained professions therapist can pick up on the subtle undertones of the patient and gain insight into the blah, blah, blah' it really seems like you could just say, 'We observe the patient and notice that he's crazy'.
Beyond that, if the test requires the patient not knowing about the test in advance or understanding the test; that's a good reason to question the validity of the test.
If someone has a heart condition that can be detected with a stethoscope - knowing how the stethoscope works - does not affect the results. But, apparently, looking at the pictures, in advance, diminishes their effectiveness.
I'm not saying a Rorschach test is crap. I'm just explaining why I think it's probably crap.