 My name is Sandak Nin and I am the author of Malignan's Search Lava, Narcissism Revisible. Today we will discuss the Rorschach inkblots test. Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach developed a set of blots of ink, inkblots, to test subjects in his clinical research. In a 1921 monograph published in English in 1942 and 1951 respectively, Rorschach postulated that the blots of ink evoked consistent and similar responses in groups of patients. Only ten of the original inkblots are currently in diagnostic use. It was John Exner who systematized the administration and scoring of the test, combining the best of several systems in use at the time, systems developed by Beck, Kloper, Rappable and Singer. The Rorschach inkblots are ambiguous forms, printed on 18 x 24 cm cards in both black and white, and sometimes in color. The very ambiguity of the inkblots provokes free associations in the test subject. The diagnostician stimulates the formation of flights of fantasy and fantasy by asking questions such as, What do you think this is? What might this be? The diagnostician then proceeds to record verbatim, the patient's responses, as well as the inkblots' spatial position and orientation. An example of such record would read, Card V upside down, child sitting on a porch and crying, waiting for his mother to return. Heading down through the entire deck, the examiner then proceeds to read aloud the responses while asking the patient to explain, in each and every case, why she or he chose to interpret the card the way they did. He asks, What in Card V prompted you to think of an abandoned child? In this phase, the patient is allowed to add details and expand upon his or her original answer. Again, everything is noted, and the subject is asked to explain what is the card, or in his previous response, gave birth to the added details, so it's an iterative process, a process where the answer expands as the conversation continues and the card is merely a trigger. Scoring the Rorschach test is a demanding task. Inevitably due to its literary nature, there is no uniform automated scoring system. Methodologically, the scorer notes four items for each card, one location. Which parts of the inkblot were singled out or emphasized in the subject's responses? Did the patient refer to the whole blot, to a detailed inkblot? And if so, was it a common or an unusual detail? Did the patient refer at all to the white spaces between the blots? The second item is determinant. Does the blot resemble what the patient saw in it? Which parts of the blot correspond to the subject's visual fantasy and narrative? Is it the blot's form, movement, color, texture, dimensionality, shading, or symmetrical pairing that might have provoked in the subject the responses that he gave elicit them? The third thing noted by the diagnostician is a content. Which of Exner's 27 content categories was selected by the patient? A human figure, an animal detail, blot, fire, sex, x-ray, and so on. Popularity. The patient's responses are compared to the overall distribution of answers among people tested with the two. Statistically, certain cards are linked to specific images and blots. For example, card 1 often provokes associations of bats or butterflies. The sixth most popular response to card 4 is animal skin, or human figure, dressed in fur, and so on. Then there is the issue of organizational activity. How coherent and organized is the patient's narrative, and how well does he or she link the various images together? There is form quality. How well does the patient's asset fit with a blot, and with a blot? There are four grades from superior, through ordinary, and weak, to minus. Exner defined minus as the distorted, arbitrary, unrealistic use of form as related to the content offered, where an answer is imposed on the blot area with total or near total disregard for the structure of the area. The interpretation of the test results on both the scores obtained and on what we know about mental health disorders is somewhat questionable. The test teaches the skill diagnostician how the subject processes information and what is the structure and content of his internal world. These provide meaningful insights into the patient's defense, psychological defense, reality test, intelligence, fantasy life, and psychosexual makeup. Or so it is thought. The Rorschach test is highly subjective and depends inordinately on the skills and training of the diagnostician and his interpretative abilities. It is therefore cannot be used to reliably diagnose patients, which mainly draws attention to the patient's defenses and personal style. In the case of narcissists, that's not enough.