The Map Project is being carried out by the ISR Board and Organizing Committee to describe how the Rorschach Test has spread all around the world. We are collecting information about how and when the 10 cards reached your country and how use of the method developed. Ultimately, the Map Project aims at creating an electronic map describing the history of the Rorschach around the world. It is to be presented at the ISR 2022 Centenary Congress in Geneva.
The ISR Centenary Congress Map Project team would like to ask all National Societies and Members to join!
To have your country represented in this project, please provide us with the following information about your country as briefly and accurately as possible (max 200 words per question) by May 31, 2021.
Country: Netherlands/Flanders
Society: Dutch Flemish Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods (NVVR)
Contact person (name & email): ANJ Pieters (president) / a.pieters58@chello.nl
WHO?
Who brought the Rorschach to your country? How did it happen?
During the 1940s and the 1950s interest in the Rorschach in the Netherlands was common and widespread. However, publications on the Rorschach did not appear until 25 years after the publication of Hermann Rorschach’s book “Psychodiagnostik” (1921). The first Dutch book that reviewed Rorschach data was published by De Zeeuw in 1952. Teaching the Rorschach at the university was not common, but in the 1950s specialists were appointed to familiarize the students with scoring and interpretation.
Starting in the beginning of the 1960s the academic climate changed. From the United States the empirical scientific paradigm spread to the Netherlands and in clinical psychology this coincided with the arrival of behaviorism and learning theory. The criticism of American empirically oriented psychologists (Cronbach, 1949) and a dissertation by Van Riemsdijk (1964) in the Netherlands had a chilling effect on Dutch psychologists responsible for the teaching of psychodiagnosis. Apart from the academic climate, the Rorschach presented several problems for the clinical psychologists. The systems of Beck and Klopfer were popular, but systematic and officially recognized training in administration, scoring and interpretation was lacking, the systems showed contradictions, and reliability and validity were not meeting accepted standards. By the late 1960’s the Rorschach test was no longer taken seriously by leading academicians in the Netherlands. Though largely written off in academic circles, the Rorschach continued to be used in clinical settings. And especially in Flanders, the Rorschach continued its popularity in forensic settings, and many forensic pschologists were trained in its use as an important method in their forensic assessment. Unfortunately, recent years have seen a steady decline in the clinical interest in the Rorschach, both in the Netherlands and Flanders, mostly due to a biased view of its emperical status, economical costs, and complexity to master.
WHEN?
When was the Rorschach first introduced in your country?
The year in which the second edition of Exner’s Volume 1 (Exner, 1986) appeared marked a turning point. Though Exner’s work had been touched upon in some courses on psychodiagnosis prior to 1986, it was not until that year that a number of Dutch psychologists in different settings became actively involved with the Comprehensive System. In 1986, the Dutch Rorschach Workgroup, devoted to work with the Comprehensive System in the Netherlands, was founded. In subsequent years members of the Workgroup schooled themselves in the System, and Anne Andronikof-Sanglade from France, John Exner and from the United States came to the Netherlands to provide training. In addition members of the Workgroup have played leading roles in the founding of the European Rorschach Association (ERA), an international scientific organization for psychologists in Europe who worked with the Comprehensive System.
As the formal continuation of the Workgroup, The Dutch Rorschach Society (NRV) saw its birth on the 14th of June, 1991, furthering knowledge and understanding of the Comprehensive System through courses and local workshops and promoting scientific research with the Comprehensive System in the Netherlands. From 1992, the NRV has been a member of the Society of the International Rorschach Society and Projective Methods (IRS). Both in 1999 in Amsterdam, and in July 2008 in Leuven (in cooperation with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven) the International Congress of the Rorschach and Projective Methods (XVI and XIX, respectively) were organised by the Dutch Rorschach Society.
In 2011, the Society changed its name to The Dutch Flemish Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods to include other projective/performance assessment methods in its field of focus and promote their scientific research in both the Netherlands and Flanders. Also, the Comprehensive System was replaced by the new Rorschach Performance Assessment System™ as the main Rorschach System taught by the Society.
WHERE?
Where was the Rorschach originally taught in your country? In what context was it used? What institutions teach the Rorschach in your country (universities, associations, continuing education organizations…)?
In Flanders, the Rorschach (e.g. Klopfer during the 1960s, the CS in the late 1990s, and after 2012 the R-PAS) was taught both at university and at post academic courses until 2015 and 2017, respectively, when a wave of (partly biased) critical international publications caused its dismissal from their curriculum. In the Netherlands, however the teaching of the Rorschach at the university and in post academic courses was only marginal, so the Society took it upon itself to teach the Rorschach to clinicians in the field of psychodiagnostics. The Rorschach (Comprehensive System) was originally taught in trainings (Utrecht, Nijmegen) both for beginners and more advanced students. The basic training consisted of a 4-day training on administration and coding, followed by a 4-day training on interpretation. After 2011, the new Rorschach System (R-PAS™) replaced the CS, and was taught alternately in the Netherlands and Flanders (Utrecht, Den Bosch, & Duffel respectively), consisting of a 2-day basic training on administration and coding, followed by a 2-day training on interpretation.
Additionally, there have been many workshops and symposia, from 2011 also including methods other than the Rorschach (e.g. Thematic Apperception Test, Adult Attachment Interview, Sentence Completion Test, Drawings, Therapeutic Assessment, and Multi-Method Assessment). Besides formal trainings, workshops and symposia, several protocol-workgroups have been coordinated both in Flanders and the Netherlands from the early beginnings, all supervised by experienced teachers.
Please feel free to consult anybody in your country who might have more information on these facts.
Any additional information about the history and development of the Rorschach in your country will be most welcome! We will be adding a “more information” link for each country and Rorschach society on the map if necessary.
Any questions? Please ask us:
Emiliano Muzio (English, French, Italian, Finnish), Project Coordinator
Noriko Nakamura (English, Japanese)
Fernando Silberstein (Spanish, English, French)
fernando.silberstein@gmail.com
Latife Yazigi (English, French, Portuguese)