Ink Blot Test

Do you remember the Rorschach Ink Blot Test? It is still used to help identify personality types and disorders.

Originally, an ink blot was made by dropping a blob of ink on a piece of paper and folding the paper down the middle. The result is a mirror image.

Rorschach held that a person's perceptual responses to inkblots could serve as clues to basic personality tendencies. But aren't our responses to everything clues to our personality?

I looked up the ten images usually used in Rorsharch tests. I didn’t reproduce them here because they all looked fairly creepy to me. Hmm, what does that say about me. :)

But I do show artist renditions of two of the ink blots, one at the beginning and one at the end.

Perhaps you remember that when I taught school, I took my classes outside to the woods where each student would find a tree that was himself, and he would write why he chose that tree.

One class made a book of their writing. The cover was made of wood. There were pressed leaves, as I remember. It was a beautiful thing. And my principal’s daughter who was a nun and taught at the Lady of the Elms College said that the children’s writing was better than any Rorschach.

I also used to give my classes the assignment to choose the flower that they were and tell why. I would do the assignment every time too. I have been a rose, a daisy, an iris, lilac and peony! My reasons for being each flower were true each time as well. The things we can find out about ourselves.

I love subjective tests. I tend to not like objective tests. I always much preferred essay questions to True and False. It seems I always had this need to express myself and not fit someone else’s measure.

It seems to me that we can take almost anything and see the differences between people’s styles.

For instance, I have noticed all the ways people cut up vegetables for salad!

Claude’s method is very precise and beautiful. He includes sprouts he has sprouted and Brazil nuts, and he layers colorful lettuces and all kinds of interesting things. His salads look like refined flowers. Claude is a physicist!

My friend Nancy makes a detailed salad as well and beautiful in a different way. Her salads look more like the image on a kaleidoscope. Although Nancy’s salads are precise, they are also rich and reveal that she is an artist.

The salads I make have Romaine lettuce torn every which way, never cut. I do cut avocado in big pieces. I love different sizes and shapes. I do not make a neat organized salad. Mine is definitely a tossed salad. My way of salad-making must show I am in a hurry, but this is the way I like to make a salad anyway.

I have also noticed the differences in personality revealed in the ways people hang up clothes outside on the clothesline!

My daughter Lauren puts everything upside down from the way I hang clothes. And Nancy again hangs very neatly. Before squeezing the clothespin, Nancy folds over the material about two inches. I think this way she keeps the clothespin marks to a minimum.

My tendency is to have the clothes totally not folded over. I will hang a towel straight up, just attached to the clothespin and not really the clothesline at all.

Do you agree that we reveal ourselves in everything we do?