ASSESSMENT: PROJECTIVE TESTS
Psychoanalysts are faced with a unique problem when developing ways to
measure the personality constructs of interest to them. By definition, themost important concepts are those the test taker is unable to report directly.
If a client can readily describe a psychological conflict, that conflict obviously
is not buried deeply in the unconscious and thus is unlikely to be the key to
understanding the person ’s problem. So how do psychoanalytic therapists
and researchers measure unconscious material? The solution is to bypass di-rect reports altogether.
Projective tests present individuals with ambiguous stimuli, such as in-
kblots or vague pictures. Test takers respond by describing what they see, tell-ing stories about the pictures, or somehow reacting to the material. The testsprovide no clues about correct or incorrect answers, which makes each per-
son’s responses highly idiosyncratic. One person may see a circus and an ele-
phant, whereas another identifies a cemetery and a woman in mourning. As
the name implies, psychoanalysts consider these responses projections from
the unconscious. The ambiguous material gives test takers an opportunity to
express pent-up impulses. However, as with other expressions of unconsciousimpulses, the significance of the response is not apparent to the test taker.
This psychologist is administering one of the most widely used personality tests:
the Rorschach ink blot test. The participant tells him what she sees on her card;whether these responses provide a valid assessment of her personality remains acontroversy.Assessment: Projective Tests 59