ment of individual characteristics, and many projective tests fail to meet
even minimal standards of reliability .
There are significant problems with the idea that unstructured tests
can be used to obtain an interpretable sample of the operations of per -
sonality . A questionnaire item that asks “Are you often irritable and an -
gry?” requires the subject to review his or her behavior over a period of
months and to estimate the typical level of this state. To the extent thatthe person is able to weigh accurately his or her recollections, this itemgives an average based on thousands of hours of living in a wide rangeof situations. By contrast, observing the responses of the individual toan inkblot or sentence fragment gives only a tiny sample of behaviors,all within the thoroughly artificial situation of a psychological testingsession. One of the recent conclusions from the trait-consistency con -
troversy is that any single instance of behavior is likely to be a very poor
indicator of the average level (Epstein, 1979); if we really want samplesof ego functioning, we must plan to spend a great deal more time andeffort than we currently do.
Finally , and most compellingly , the results of careful research stud-
ies using projective tests to measure traits or predict outcomes havebeen almost uniformly disappointing. In a detailed review of studies onprojective tests conducted between 1950 and 1965, Suinn and Oskamp(1969) concluded, “There are only a few things which the clinician canpredict from these personality tests with confidence that his judgmentsare being made on a scientific basis. The remainder of his predictivework is still based on faith or on theory rather than on evidence” (p.117). A review based on only five studies (Parker, Hanson, & Hunsley ,1988) came to a more sanguine conclusion on the validity of Rorschachmeasures, and they continue to have their defenders (Meyer, 2000), butit is safe to say the weight of evidence is still against the scientific valueof most projective measures (Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2000).
Conscious versus Unconscious Elements
One of the most intriguing aspects of Suinn and Oskamp’s review(1969) is the consistent finding that the most nearly valid tests werethose that agreed most closely with self-report. Sentence completiontests, for example, that come close to direct self-reports are among thebetter-validated projective tests. Rotter and Rafferty (1950) constructeda sentence completion test of maladjustment that was significantly cor -Ego Psychologies and Projective Methods 155