Rorschach inkblot test

The Rorschach inkblot test is a method of psychological evaluation developed by Hermann Rorschach. Psychologists use this test to try to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients.

There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you! —Richard Feynman

Quotes

• The subject is given one plate [inkblot] after the other and asked, "What might this be?"
• Almost all subjects regard the experiment as a test of imagination. This conception is so general that it becomes, practically, a condition of the experiment. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the figures actually has little to do with imagination, and it is unnecessary to consider imagination a prerequisite....The interpretation of the chance forms falls in the field of perception and apperception rather than imagination.
  • Hermann Rorschach, Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception (1921; translated 1942)
• This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!
  • Richard Feynman in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, in the chapter Is Electricity Fire?
• I asked her what [Unconscious "Rorschach in Danmaku"] actually supposed to be, but she said it's just a random blob that happens to look like some kinda meaningful shape. It just looks like a colony a' mosquitoes to me.
  • ZUN, line for Marisa Kirisame, The Grimoire of Marisa