The figure usually credited: E.g., Gardner Lindzey, Projective Techniques and Cross-Cultural Research (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1961), 14; Lemov, “X-Rays of Inner Worlds: The Mid-Twentieth-Century American Projective Test Movement,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47.3 (2011): 263.
A. Irving Hallowell: Jennifer S. H. Brown and Susan Elaine Gray, “Editors’ Preface” to A. Irving Hallowell, Contributions to Ojibwe Studies: Essays, 1934–72 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010); Hallowell, “On Being an Anthropologist” (1972), in ibid., 1–15. This volume contains all Hallowell essays cited below, unless noted. Hallowell used the older spelling “Ojibwa” in his essays; emended to “Ojibwe” in quotations. Many Ojibwe now refer to themselves as Anishinaabe (plural Anishinaabeg).
summers along the Berens: See especially “The Northern Ojibwa” (1955) and the evocative “Shabwán: A Dissocial Indian Girl” (1938).
“a country of labyrinthine waterways”: “Shabwán,” 253.
“birchbark-covered tipis”: “Northern Ojibwa,” 35.
“In this atmosphere”: “Northern Ojibwa,” 36.
“the strange word Rorschach”: Quoted in “Note to Part VII” in Hallowell, Contributions, 467; cf. Hallowell, “On Being an Anthropologist,” 7, and George W. Stocking Jr., “A. I. Hallowell’s Boasian Evolutionism,” in Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments in Anthropology, ed. Richard Handler (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 207.
“I am going to show you”: Quoted in Rebecca Lemov, Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 61. “Ojibwa” emended to “Ojibwe.”
dozens of Ojibwe Rorschach protocols: The originals are in Bert Kaplan, Primary Records in Culture and Personality, vol. 2 (Madison, WI: Microcard Foundation, 1956). Hallowell eventually collected 151 protocols.
different stages of Ojibwe assimilation: Quotes and paraphrases from “Acculturation Processes and Personality Changes as Indicated by the Rorschach Technique” (1942), reprinted in Sherman, Rorschach Reader, and “Values, Acculturation, and Mental Health” (1950).
two groundbreaking articles: “The Rorschach Method as an Aid in the Study of Personalities in Primitive Societies” (1941); “The Rorschach Technique” (1945), see note “Prior to 1920” on this page. See also “Some Psychological Characteristics of the Northeastern Indians” (1946), esp. 491–94, where he argues that the Rorschach does a better job of testing intelligence than other standard tests because it is less culturally biased toward Western modes of intelligence. His argument is very similar to Hermann Rorschach’s in his 1920 letter to a prospective publisher.
“since psychological meaning”: “The Rorschach Technique,” 204.
while “conceivable”: Ibid., 200.
A 1942 study of Samoans: Philip Cook, “The Application of the Rorschach Test to a Samoan Group” [1942], in Sherman, Rorschach Reader.
“one of the best available means”: “The Rorschach Technique,” 209.
president of both: Lemov, Database of Dreams, 136.
“seemed like a mental X-ray machine”: Walter Mischel, who would go on to conduct the famous “marshmallow experiment” relating young children’s self-control to later success, quoted in Jonah Lehrer, “Don’t!,” New Yorker, May 18, 2009.
Chapter 16: The Queen of Tests
Within three weeks: ExRS, 32; Exner et al., “History of the Society,” 18–20.
Army General Classification Test: Thomas W. Harrell (who helped design it), “Some History of the Army General Classification Test,” Journal of Applied Psychology 77.6 (1992): 875–78.
Inspection Technique: Ruth Munroe, “Inspection Technique,” RRE 5.4 (1941): 166–91, and “The Inspection Technique: A Method of Rapid Evaluation of the Rorschach Protocol,” RRE 8 (1944): 46–70.
Group Rorschach Technique: M. R. Harrower-Erickson, “A Multiple Choice Test for Screening Purposes (For Use with the Rorschach Cards or Slides),” Psychosomatic Medicine 5.4 (1943): 331–41; see also Molly Harrower and Matilda Elizabeth Steiner, Large Scale Rorschach Techniques: A Manual for the Group Rorschach and Multiple Choice Tests (Toronto: Charles C. Thomas, 1945).
“the great difficulties”: “Group Techniques for the Rorschach Test,” in Projective Psychology: Clinical Approaches to the Total Personality, ed. Edwin Lawrence and Leopold Bellak (New York: Knopf, 1959), 147–48.
Harrower later commented: Ibid., 148.
a positive reception: Ibid., 172 ff.
standardized tests: Reisman, History of Clinical Psychology, 271.
“queen of tests”: Hilgard, Psychology in America, 517n.
the turning point: Reisman, History of Clinical Psychology, chap. 6–7; Jonathan Engel, American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States (New York: Gotham Books, 2008), chap. 3; Wood, chap. 4–5; Hans Pols and Stephanie Oak, “The US Psychiatric Response in the 20th Century,” American Journal of Public Health 97.12 (2007): 2132–42.
1,875,000 men: William C. Menninger, “Psychiatric Experiences in the War,” American Journal of Psychiatry 103.5 (1947): 577–86; Braceland, “Psychiatric Lessons from World War II,” American Journal of Psychiatry 103.5 (1947): 587–93; Pols and Oak, “US Psychiatric Response.”
“pitiful” physical health: Engel, American Therapy, 46–47.
When the war started: Menninger, “Psychiatric Experiences”; Reisman, History of Clinical Psychology, 298.
“practically every member”: Edward A. Strecker, “Presidential Address [to the American Psychiatric Association]” (1944), quoted in Pols and Oak, “US Psychiatric Response.”
designing complex instrument panels: Reisman, History of Clinical Psychology, 298.
By an accident of timing: There was no textbook for the MMPI until 1951 (Wood 86 and n14).
second most popular personality test: C. M. Louttit and C. G. Browne, “The Use of Psychometric Instruments in Psychological Clinics,” Journal of Consulting Psychology 11.1 (1947): 49–54.
dissertation topic: Hilgard, Psychology in America, 516.
one first lieutenant: Max Siegel, president of the American Psychological Association in the eighties, in Exner et al., “History of the Society,” 20.
operational fatigue: Seymour G. Klebanoff, “A Rorschach Study of Operational Fatigue in Army Air Forces Combat Personnel,” RRE 10.4 (1946): 115–20.
Case review conferences: Hilgard, Psychology in America, 516–17.
status symbol: Wood, 97–98; Engel, American Therapy, 16–17, 65–70.
“at a time of emergency”: Klopfer, Rorschach Technique, iv.
leading educational psychologist: Wood, 175; Lee J. Cronbach: Quoted in Wood, 343n10.
Ruth Bochner and Florence Halpern: The Clinical Application of the Rorschach Test (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1942); see Wood, 85. I have found little information about Ruth Rothenberg Bochner (graduate of Vassar and Columbia) and Florence Cohn Halpern (1900–1981, PhD 1951, active in the civil rights movement and counseling the rural poor in the sixties).
“a carelessly written work”: Morris Krugman, first president of Klopfer’s Rorschach Institute, review of Bochner and Halpern, Clinical Application, in Journal of Consulting Psychology 6.5 (1942): 274–75. Samuel J. Beck’s review is in Psychoanalytic Quarterly 11 (1942): 587–89.
Time magazine: March 30, 1942.
on the double: From a lively review by Edna Mann, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 16.4 (1946): 731–32.
Chapter 17: Iconic as a Stethoscope
22.5 million: Erika Doss, Looking at Life Magazine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).
future novelist Paul Bowles: His answers were “somewhat uncompromising and rather daring” and suggested a personality “amazingly complex and individualistic, little in common with ‘ordinary’ people” (“Personality Tests: Ink Blots Are Used to Learn How People’s Minds Work,” Life, October 7, 1946, pp. 55–60).
The Dark Mirror: See
Darragh O’Donoghue, “The Dark Mirror,” Melbourne Cinémathèque Annotations on Film 31 (April 2004); www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/cteq/dark_mirror, last accessed October 2016.
inkblot in print ads: Marla Eby, in “X-Rays of the Soul: Panel Discussion,” April 23, 2012, Harvard University, vimeo.com/46502939.
Life magazine could look back: Donald Marshman, “Mister See-odd Mack,” Life, August 25, 1947; Siodmak was the director of The Dark Mirror. The sailor photo is from Life, August 27, 1945.
Life headline about Jackson Pollock: August 8, 1949.
“Most modern painters”: 1950 interview with William Wright; Evelyn Toynton, Jackson Pollock (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 20, 37, 52; T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 308; Ellen G. Landau, Jackson Pollock (New York: Abrams, 2000), 159; John J. Curley, A Conspiracy of Images: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and the Art of the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 27–28. Rorschach had similar ideas: Emil Lüthy said Rorschach “wasn’t interested in art per se, but art insofar as it is an expression of the soul….He tended to judge artistic things as expressions of the mental, spiritual, emotional, or psychological state of its creator. He put the main weight on expression of the soul through the senses or the body, the hands, the movement for example” (WSI).
“as closely identified”: Arthur Jensen, “Review of the Rorschach Inkblot Test,” in Sixth Mental Measurements Yearbook, ed. Oscar Krisen Buros (Highland Park, NJ: Gryphon Press, 1965).
One German dissertation: Summarized by the author in Alfons Dawo, “Nachweis psychischer Veränderungen…,” Rorschachiana 1 (1952/53): 238–49. Dawo’s methodology hardly inspires confidence—for instance, subjects were shown the Rorschach blots the first time and the Behn-Eschenburg “alternate series” the second time.
Anne Roe: The Making of a Scientist (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953). C. Grønnerød, G. Overskeid, and E. Hartmann, “Under Skinner’s Skin: Gauging a Behaviorist from His Rorschach Protocol,” JPA 95.1 (2013): 1–12, gives all of Skinner’s answers; my thanks to Greg Meyer for the reference. Other quotes: B. F. Skinner, The Shaping of a Behaviorist (New York: Knopf, 1979), 174–75.
not to spend more of his weekends: Joke stolen from Grønnerød, Overskeid, and Hartmann, “Under Skinner’s Skin.”
adopted this audio Rorschach: Alexandra Rutherford, “B. F. Skinner and the Auditory Inkblot,” History of Psychology 6.4 (2003): 362–78.
Edward F. Kerman, MD: “Cypress Knees and the Blind,” JPT 23.1 (1959): 49–56.
A new theory: Fred Brown, “An Exploratory Study of Dynamic Factors in the Content of the Rorschach Protocol,” JPT 17.3 (1953): 251–79, quotation from 252.
Robert Lindner: “The Content Analysis of the Rorschach Protocol,” in Lawrence and Bellak, Projective Psychology, 75–90 (“electroshock therapy” below is emended from the now obsolete term “convulsive therapy” in the original).
Rorschach’s own stance: PD, 123, 207.
David Rapaport: David Rapaport with Merton Gill and Roy Schafer, Diagnostic Psychological Testing, vol. 2 (Chicago: Year Book, 1946), 473–91, esp. 480, 481, 485.
Manfred Bleuler: “After Thirty Years of Clinical Experience with the Rorschach Test,” Rorschachiana 1 (1952): 12–24, block quote from 22, emended.
no conventions: Lawrence Frank anticipated this argument as early as 1939, the same year as his groundbreaking essay on projective methods: the Rorschach “reveal[s] the personality of the individual, as an individual,” rather than in relation to social norms, “because the subject is not aware of what he is telling and has no cultural norms for hiding himself” (“Comments on the Proposed Standardization of the Rorschach Method,” RRE 3 [1939]: 104). Cf. Hallowell in 1945: “Because of the non-pictorial and unconventional character of the blots, they are open to practically an unlimited variety of interpretations” (“The Rorschach Technique,” 199).
Rudolf Arnheim: “Perceptual and Aesthetic Aspects of the Movement Response” (1951), in Toward a Psychology of Art, 85 and 89; “Perceptual Analysis of a Rorschach Card” (1953), in ibid., 90 and 91.
he too called into question: Ernest Schachtel argued that “projection” in Frank’s sense was so general as to be meaningless (“Projection and Its Relation to Creativity and Character Attitudes in the Kinesthetic Responses,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 13.1 [1950]: 69–100).
calling Klopfer’s 1942 manual vague: Review of Klopfer and Kelley’s Rorschach Technique in Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 5.4 (1942): 604–6, followed by a dismissive one-paragraph review of Bochner and Halpern’s book: “It shows traces of being hastily written…a simple description of the technical categories [and] some interesting case records.” Schachtel had written a trenchant essay on Beck as early as 1937: “Original Response and Type of Apperception in Dr. Beck’s Rorschach Manual,” RRE 2 (1937): 70–72.
“not the words”: Ernest Schachtel, “The Dynamic Perception and the Symbolism of Form,” Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 4.1 (1941): 93n37 emended.
“the test will become”: Review of Klopfer and Kelley’s Rorschach Technique.
took up Arnheim’s 1951 call: After Arnheim specifically criticized Schachtel, among others, for saying (in “Projection and Its Relation to Creativity,” 76) that anything in the blot must have been projected into it, Schachtel took the lesson to heart. His book collecting and expanding his earlier essays approvingly cites Arnheim’s article: Ernest Schachtel, Experiential Foundations of Rorschach’s Test (London: Tavistock, 1966), 33n, 90n.
He analyzed the blots’ unity: Ibid., 33–42; size: 126–130.
discoveries in the science of perception: Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology (1947; repr., New York: Mentor, 1959), 118n8; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior (1942; Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2002), 119, and Phenomenology of Perception (1945; London: Routledge, 2012), 547n3; Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 71.
Chapter 18: The Nazi Rorschachs
the Nuremberg Trials: This chapter relies largely on Eric Zillmer et al., The Quest for the Nazi Personality: A Psychological Investigation of Nazi War Criminals (New York: Routledge, 1995); see also “Bats and Dancing Bears: An Interview with Eric A. Zillmer,” Cabinet 5 (2001), and Jack El-Hai, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013). Christian Müller supplements Zillmer with new primary material (see note “Kelley gave the Rorschach,” below). Additional descriptions of Nuremberg from Douglas M. Kelley, 22 Cells in Nuremberg (London: W. H. Allen, 1947); Gustave M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (1947; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1995).
“In addition to careful medical”: Kelley, 22 Cells, 7.
on no real authority: John Dolibois, Gilbert’s predecessor, said that Prison Commander Andrus “would not have known a psychologist from a bootmaker”; “Gilbert had pretty much a free hand and his book was foremost in his mind from the day he arrived” (quoted in Zillmer et al., Quest, 40).
“could hardly wait”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 3.
Some of the Nazis: Zillner et al., 54 f. Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (New York: Knopf, 1995), records that Speer regarded the tests as “idiotic” and so responded with “total nonsense,” especially on the Rorschach. Yet “it seems that he was rather irked when he found out that, as a result, the psychologist Dr. Gilbert had rated him twelfth in intelligence” (573).
“chuckled with glee”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 15.
“excellent intelligence bordering”: 22 Cells, 44.
“No Geniuses”: The New Yorker, June 1, 1946.
“With but a short time”: Kelley, 22 Cells, 18.
except into other countries: Geoffrey Cocks, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 306, emended; Zillmer et al., Quest, 49n.
&
nbsp; Kelley gave the Rorschach: Zillmer et al. (xvii, 87, 195ff.) lists seven tests administered by Kelley: Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, Hans Frank, Rosenberg, Dönitz, Ley, and Streicher; in the appendix giving all the proto cols, he gives six—without Hess, whose test was not in the archive where the protocols were retrieved in 1992. However, Hess’s results have been found among Kelley’s papers (cited by El-Hai); another copy of Kelley’s protocols, in the Marguerite Loosli-Usteri papers (HRA Rorsch LU 1:1:16), includes the same six without Hess’s, plus one from Joachim von Ribbentrop, previously unknown (Christian Müller, Wer hat die Geisteskranken von den Ketten befreit? [Bonn: Das Narrenschiff, 1998], 289–304, esp. 300–301).
The prisoners’ results: Zillmer et al., Quest, chap. 6.
“lay on his cot”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 434–35, last ellipsis in the original.
“essentially sane”: Quoted in Zillmer et al., Quest, 79.
“not spectacular types”: Kelley, 22 Cells, 195ff.
More likely, they themselves didn’t know: Zillmer et al., Quest, 67.
“We operated on the assumption”: Quoted in Zillmer et al., Quest, 60–61, quotation shortened here.
The insults and retaliations: Zillmer et al., Quest, 61–67.
“only interested in gaining”: Quoted in El-Hai, Nazi and the Psychiatrist, 175.
Criminal Man: El-Hai, Nazi and the Psychiatrist, 190; cf. 188, 214.
uncomfortably close bond: Kelley, 22 Cells, 10, 43.
“Göring died”: Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 435.
Kelley committed suicide: Here El-Hai supersedes Zillmer et al. See also “U.S. Psychiatrist in Nazi Trial Dies,” New York Times, January 2, 1958; “Mysterious Suicide of Nuremburg Psychiatrist,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 2005.
the Nazi who had been in charge: Zillmer et al., Quest, 239–40; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963; repr., New York: Penguin, 2006); Alberto A. Peralta, “The Adolf Eichmann Case,” Rorschachiana 23.1 (1999): 76–89; Istvan S. Kulcsar, “Ich habe immer Angst gehabt,” Der Spiegel, November 14, 1966; Istvan S. Kulcsar, Shoshanna Kulcsar, and Lipót Szondi, “Adolf Eichmann and the Third Reich,” in Crime, Law and Corrections, ed. Ralph Slovenko (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1966), 16–51.
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