Eli5: Why do/did (not sure if it’s still in practice) therapists hold up black and white splatter looking images and ask the client “what do you see?” What could their answer say about that person?
In: Other
Everyone’s mind is different, but all minds work by seeing patterns. If I show you a picture that’s almost completely random (like, say, a blotch of ink on a page), the patterns your mind finds are going to tell me something about how your mind organizes information.
If I show the same random picture to lots of people, and I already know something about how their mind organizes information, I can find common patterns. I can start to say, “lots of people think blotch A is a butterfly, but people who really like chocolate think it looks like a candy wrapper”. If I then ask you about the random pattern, I can compare what your mind does to those patterns and start to figure out what kind of mind you have. If you think it looks like a candy wrapper, I can make a pretty good guess that you like chocolate more than most people.
Of course, if I want this to work for more people than just you, I need to keep my conclusions a secret, because once people know “This picture is supposed to look like a butterfly”, the pattern isn’t so random any more and I won’t be able to say for sure if you like chocolate or not.
That’s the Rorschach in a nutshell. The problem with it is that:
A) the secrecy I need to keep makes it hard to use on a lot of people without the test not working any more.
B) my mind also works by finding patterns, so it’s possible the patterns I think I’m seeing when I show that picture to lots of people might be their own kind of Rorschach test, which means I can never be sure my Rorschach test says anything about anyone but me.
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