A new test of an old hypothesis: a quantification of sequence in the Rorschach

Rorschach interpretation often assumes that successive responses are not independent of one another but rather that they are part of a series of interconnected events. In this study, methods that have been used to analyze event sequence data were applied to Rorschach protocols. Results from a nonclinical group of 102 university students showed that location scores on successive responses were repeated more frequently than was predicted by chance. There was also a tendency for subjects to make transitions from larger to smaller or more detailed areas of the inkblot on successive responses. In addition, we found that subjects tended to make transitions from more adequate to less adequate use of form, and that the unusual and minus form categories tended to be repeated. A modest association between transition frequencies and individual differences in anxiety, but not between transition frequencies and depression or overall symptomatology, was demonstrated.