Few books illuminate a domain of clinical inquiry as superbly as Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach. Paul Lerner has written a comprehensive text that offers a richly detailed, multidimensional vision of the Rorschach as the ideal medium for operationalizing, testing, and in some instances transforming contemporary clinical theory. For psychoanalytic therapists, the book provides a fascinating overview of how the coevolution of psychoanalytic theory and Rorschach technique has created new possibilities for conceptual integration. Lerner explores recent advances in our ability to operationalize such clinical concepts as splitting, dissociation, and false-self organization. He then reviews how these advances have been applied to research into psychic organization across different diagnostic categories, including anorexia and bulimia, aggressive and psychopathic personality, and schizotypal disorders. Finally, Lerner shows how the resulting data offer a unique vantage point from which to clarify such critical topics as developmental object relations and the structure of primitive experience. Rorschach scholars will appreciate Lerner's informed discussions of theorists as diverse as Rapaport and Schachtel, Exner and Mayman, Schafer and Leichtman. Rorschach students, for their part, will find the book an unusually lucid introduction to test administration, scoring, interpretation, and report writing. Even here, however, Lerner's breadth and originality are apparent, for his exposition of these testing fundamentals incorporates fresh discussions of the nature of the Rorschach test, the impact of the patient-examiner relationship, and the value of the test in treatment planning. Timely, definitive, and uniquely integrative, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach will be valued by students, clinicians, and researchers well into the next century.

With the integration of a modern object relations theory, a comprehensive psychodynamic developmental theory, and a clinically based psychology of the self into the mainstream of classical psychoanalytic theory, new models of personality development and psychopathology are emerging. These newer models, in turn, by broadening the conceptual basis for studying people by means of the Rorschach, have sparked a significant resurgence of interest in the test. This book examines the clinical and research uses of the Rorschach to the entire spectrum of primitive or developmentally earlier mental states, including narcissistic disturbances, eating disorders, victims of incest, and disturbances in gender identity. -- Publisher description.

In Disordered Thinking and the Rorschach, James Kleiger provides a thoroughly up-to-date text that covers the entire range of clinical and diagnostic issues associated with the phenomenon of disordered thinking as revealed on the Rorschach. Kleiger guides the reader through the history of psychiatric and psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the nature and significance of different kinds of disordered thinking and their relevance to understanding personality structure and differential diagnosis. He then moves on to thorough reviews of the respective contributions of David Rapaport, Robert Holt, Philip Holzman, and John Exner in conceptualizing and scoring disordered thinking on the Rorschach. These synopses are followed by an equally fascinating examination of less well known research conceptualizations, which, taken together, help clarify the basic interpretive conundrums besetting the major systems. Finally, having brought the reader to a full understanding of systematic exploration to date, Kleiger enters into a detailed analysis of the phenomenological and psychodynamic aspects of disordered thinking per se. Even experienced clinicians will find themselves challenged to reconceptualize such familiar categories as confabulatory or combinative thinking in a manner that leads not only to new diagnostic precision, but also to a richer understanding of the varieties of thought disturbances with their equally variable therapeutic and prognostic implications. With Disordered Thinking and the Rorschach, Kleiger has succeeded in summarizing a wealth of experience pertaining to the rigorous empirical detection and classification of disordered thinking. Equally impressive, he has taken full advantage of the Rorschach as an assessment instrument able to capture the richness of personality and thus capable of providing a unique clinical window into those crucially important differences in the quality of thought that patients may evince.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Introduction -- PART I: Understanding and assessing psychotic phenomena -- 1 Psychotic phenomena: Toward a conceptual understanding of reality testing and disordered thinking -- 2 Assessing disordered thinking and psychotic phenomena -- PART II: Rorschach assessment of psychotic phenomena -- 3 Hermann Rorschach's experiment -- 4 Contributions of Rapaport and Holt -- 5 The Thought Disorder Index -- 6 The Comprehensive System and Rorschach Performance Assessment System -- 7 Alternative Rorschach approaches for assessing disordered thinking -- 8 Integrated model of Rorschach signs of disordered thinking -- PART III: Dimensions of disordered thinking -- 9 Disorganization: Problems in focusing, filtering, and language usage -- 10 Illogicality: Problems in reasoning and logic -- 11 Impoverishment in thinking and language -- 12 Awareness of perceptual and reasoning errors -- PART IV: Differential diagnosis of psychotic phenomena on the Rorschach -- 13 Primary psychoses and the Rorschach -- 14 Secondary psychotic phenomena and the Rorschach -- 15 Malingered psychosis and disordered thinking -- 16 Rorschach indications of psychotic phenomena in children and adolescents -- Final Thoughts: Empirical, conceptual, and practical considerations -- Index

This book provides a definitive empirical study of antisocial character pathology and its assessment through the use of the Rorschach. Drawing upon a decade of research with nearly 400 individuals in various hospitals and prisons, the authors paint an extraordinary intrapsychic picture of the personality structure and psychodynamics of these troublesome patients. Serving as both an educational tool and a reference text, this book presents: * Rorschach data on several different antisocial groups -- conduct disordered children and adolescents, antisocial personality disordered adult males with and without schizophrenia, antisocial adult females, and male and female sexual homicide perpetrators; * nomothetic (group) and idiographic (case study) data; * data which have been analyzed and theoretically interpreted using both structural methods and psychoanalytic approaches which represent the cutting edge of Rorschach theory and practice; and * a developmental approach in analyzing Rorschach data gathered from antisocial children, adolescents, and adults -- providing striking similarities. This is the first Rorschach database of this type that has ever been published. As such, it serves as a valuable reference text for Rorschach users -- providing a definitive empirical base, theoretical integration, and a focus on individuals who create severe problems for society.

Martin Leichtman's The Rorschach is a work of stunning originality that takes as its point of departure a circumstance that has long confounded Rorschach examiners. Attempts to use the Rorschach with young children yield results that are inconsistent if not comical. What, after all, does one make of a protocol when the child treats a card like a frisbee or confidently detects "piadigats" and "red foombas"? A far more consequential problem facing examiners of adults and children alike concerns the very nature of the Rorschach test. Despite voluminous literature establishing the personality correlates of particular Rorschach scores, neither Hermann Rorschach nor his intellectual descendants have provided an adequate explanation of precisely what the subject is being asked to do. Is the Rorschach a test of imagination? Of perception? Of projection? In point of fact, Leichtman argues, the two problems are intimately related. To appreciate the stages through which children gradually master the Rorschach in its standard form is to discover the nature of the test itself. Integrating his developmental analysis with an illuminating discussion of the extensive literature on test administration, scoring, and interpretation, Leichtman arrives at a new understanding of the Rorschach as a test of representation and creativity. This finding, in turn, leads to an intriguing reconceptualization of all projective tests that clarifies their relationships to more objective measures of ability.

Appreciation of the beauty and complexity of the human mind when perceiving an ambiguous stimulus led Dr. Hermann Rorschach to develop his scientific method eighty years ago. Full of gratitude for his brief life and work, the editors hope this volume will stand as an idiographic testament to his brilliance for the Rorschach students of the future. The contributors are clearly the most notable Rorschach clinicians in practice, and their work integrates the Comprehensive System and psychoanalytic methods. This book is organized into four sections. Within each of the first three sections -- devoted to psychotic, borderline, and neurotic disorders respectively -- the editors and invited authors have contributed Rorschach case studies which vertically cut a character pathology, personality disorder, or clinical diagnosis through a particular level of personality organization. The last section charts the enormously varied course that Rorschach work can navigate -- from the understanding of a Nobel laureate, the pain of trauma and transexuality, and the Nazi perversion of youth, to the consensus Rorschach in couple's therapy and cutting edge work in neuropsychology.

For decades, The Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM)--the most popular of the projective tests--has been routinely employed for personality assessment and treatment planning. But in recent years, it has not been free from controversy. Criticisms of its validity and empirical support are catalyzing new efforts to strengthen its foundations and document its broad utility. Among the most common--yet also most confusing and challenging--categories of clinical disorders is the personality disorders. However, minimal data have been available on the RIM evaluation of most of those found in DSM-IV. This welcomed book constitutes the first research-grounded, comprehensive guide to the use of the RIM in assessing personality disorders. The first section offers a theoretical overview of personality disorders and constructs a framework and compelling rationale for the legitimate role of the RIM in their assessment. The second, third, and fourth sections present Cluster A disorders--paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal; Cluster B disorders--antisocial and psychopathic, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic; and Cluster C disorders--avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive. The fifth section presents passive aggressive and depressive personality disorders, currently being proposed for DSM inclusion. Each chapter in these four sections includes an extensive description of the disorder, a review of empirical studies of the use of the RIM to assess it, an analysis of the Rorschach variables that may characterize patients diagnosed with it, and a depiction of a real case and discussion of the ways in which the RIM contributed to its formulation. The sixth and final section explores the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the RIM. Rorschach Assessment of the Personality Disorders brings practical help for clinicians and clinicians-in-training, and suggests new paths for researchers seeking to advance our understanding of the complexities of these disorders.

Exner's Comprehensive System has attracted so much attention in recent years that many clinicians and personality researchers are unaware that alternative Rorschach scoring systems exist. This is unfortunate, because some of these systems have tremendous clinical value. Scoring the Rorschach: Seven Validated Systems provides detailed reviews of the best-validated alternative approaches, and points to promising new paths towards the continued growth and refinement of Rorschach interpretation. The editors set the stage with an extended introduction to historical controversies and cutting-edge empirical methods for Rorschach validation. Each chapter presents a different Rorschach scoring system. A brief history is followed by detailed information on scoring and interpretation, a comprehensive summary of evidence bearing on construct validity, and discussion of clinical applications, empirical limitations, and future directions. A user-friendly scoring "manual" for each system offers readers practical guidance. The systems tap a broad array of content areas including ego defenses, thought disorder, mental representations of self and others, implicit motives, personality traits, and potential for psychotherapy. All psychologists seriously engaged in the work of personality assessment will find in this book welcome additions to their professional toolkits.

The self psychology of Heinz Kohut has been an important force in contemporary psychoanalytic thought and its ramifications for therapy have been extensively explored. Now, Marshall Silverstein offers the first analysis of the application of self psychology to projective diagnostic assessment. Differentiating the self psychological approach from an ego psychological interpretation of classical drive theory, he clearly outlines the principal contributions of Kohut, including the concepts of selfobject functions, empathy, transmuting internalization, and compensatory structure. Providing numerous clinical examples, he shows how the major selfobject functions of mirroring, idealization, and twinship can be identified on projective tests. Silverstein then demonstrates how conventional assessment approaches to grandiosity, self-esteem, and idealization can be reconceptualized within the framework of self psychology, and he also contrasts ego psychological interpretations with self psychological interpretations. This book makes a strong case for the importance of the clinical identification of self states. It will help practitioners understand their patients' varied attempts to repair an injury to the self to restore self-esteem (compensatory structure) and the clinical consequences of self-disorders, including disintegration products such as narcissistic rage and affect states characterized by empty depression, chronic boredom, and lack of zest.