AN THEIR original impact upon American psychology projective techiuques aroused a wave of confused skepticism, but along with this they produced a crisis in psychological theory Here was the startling proposal that by an unbelievably simple procedure it was now possible to reveal the djmamics of the deepest regions of the personality, to get at phenomena which had eluded the complex expenmental and psychometric methods of probing Could it be possible that such a simple technique might succeed where other methods had failed^ If so, how could its almost magical accomplishment be explained''Originally, explanation was sought in an obvious common feature of the projective techniques, namely, the unstructured nature of the matenals and test sittiation. An important change has occurred, however, in the meamng of the term projecttve teckmque to render this line of explanation obsolete Today projective tests may include anything from completely unstructured free-association to highly structured tests such as the Bender-Gestalt and the WechslerBellevue. Apparently we no longer have a distinct class of proj«:tive tests, we have instead a projective approach which can be api^ied to any test situation Although the present trend implies the existence of a projective process which can be evoked by a large variety of conditions, we know virtually nothing about the psychological character of this process. We do not even know whether the same kind of projective process occurs under both unstructured and structured test conditions Thus the projective magic has been extended, but it remains unexplained This fundamental change in the conception of projective techniques has not been thoroughly assimilated and has not yet penetiated • The writers are greatly iiidd>ted to Professor Hardd R Israel £or generois and helpful suggestxms related to the thrarehcal aspects of this paper.

In a previous expenment we investigated the mfluence of color on reactions to ink blots by a technique in which two independent groups of subjects were presented matched chromatic and achromatic blots (3) This technique was used to demonstrate that when the color vanable is completely isolated it has measurable effects which show up as group differences or trends in both the reaction time and the content of the conceptual responses But such a technique employing mdependent groups for chromatic and achromatic blots has senous limitations from the point of view of providing a solution to the major expenmental and clinical problems in this area The research psychologist mterested in validating the Rorschach technique and the chmcian engaged in applying the test are only lndtrectly interested in group trends They are pnmanly concerned with the problem of measuring accurately the influence of color upon a particular individual's reactions in order to relate this measure to a specific type of personality constellation From the standpoint of experimental design, a technique based upon independent groups can yield measures only of group trends. It cannot provide a valid method of measuring the effect of a given variable upon a particular individual's reactions Measurement of the specific effect of a vanable, hke color, upon particular individuals IS strictly possible only if each subject serves as his own control; comparable chromatic and achromatic data for each subject must be provided.These methodological considerations are important here because we are dealing with the kind of psychological phenomenon which cannot be readily identified by its all-or-none character If color-influenced conceptual responses were always specific to the color series and wholly absent from a matched achromatic series, one might be able to develop a measure of the influence of color upon a specific individual without having to resort to an individual achrcnnatic norm But our previous research showed that most "color-influenced" responses are of the type which can be identified only in

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