Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS) for assessing disordered thought and perception.

Abstract

T he Rorschach is a multifaceted personality assessment measure that consists of 10 inkblots printed individually on 6-inch by 9-inch cards. Five of the blots are in shades of gray and black; two of the blots are in shades of red, gray, and black; and the remaining three blots are in shades of pastel colors. Respondents are shown the 10 blots one at a time and asked, "What might this be?" If they have difficulty answering, they are asked further, "What does it look like to you?" or "What do you see in it?" In a follow-up inquiry, respondents are asked where in the blots they saw each of their percepts and what made it look as it did. Responses are then coded for their Location, Determinants, Content, and a variety of special scores, which taken together provide information about a person's cognitive functioning, affective experience, interpersonal relatedness, and self-perception. These basic aspects of Rorschach coding and interpretation have been elaborated by Choca ( 2013), Choca and Rossini (2018), Sciara et al. (2014), and Weiner (2013b.The Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS) emerged from the work of Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist who, in 1917, began to examine what people with various personality characteristics would report seeing in a series of inkblots in a variety of shapes and colors. From the responses of 288 mental hospital patients and 117 nonpatients, Rorschach selected the previously mentioned 10 blots on the basis of their eliciting particularly interesting responses. His work with these blots culminated in the 1921 publication of Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception (Rorschach, 1942),

Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS) assessment of bipolar spectrum disorders.

“…Following the appearance of Exner's fourth and final edition in 2003, other innovators continued the evolution of the present-day RCS with such new scales as the Ego Impairment Index (EII; Viglione et al, 2003); the Rorschach Oral Dependency Scale (ROD; Bornstein & Masling, 2005); the Rorschach Prognostic Rating Scale (RPRS; Handler & Clemence, 2005); the Rorschach Extended Aggression Scores (Gacono et al, 2005); and, more recently, the Rorschach Reality Fantasy Scale (RFS; , the Rorschach Developmental Index (RDI; Resende et al, 2019), the Rorschach Hope Index (Scioli et al, 2018), and the Rorschach Omnipotence Scale (Homann, 2018). Other contemporary publications have elaborated on considerations in the RCS assessment of adolescents (Tibon-Czopp & Weiner, 2016) and senior adults (Weiner et al, 2019), and the utility of the RCS in evaluating disordered thinking and perception (Weiner, 2021).…”