Rorschach and affordances: A theoretical reconsideration of the test

For a long time, Rorschach’s test has been viewed as a ‘projective’ method. As a consequence, using the Rorschach has been conceived of as a way of grasping something from the ‘intrapsychic’ reality of the person. In line with this idea, and owing to some confusion between the notions of projection and identification, Rorschach responses have regularly been interpreted following the identification theory. This theory assumes, among other things, that individuals are likely to select those answers that are most congruent with their own identity (Exner, 2003). This can lead, in some approaches, to the idea that whatever the characteristics of the response, these say a lot about the examinee himself. The attributes of the examinee would necessarily (and mainly) be at stake in the response. For example, there is the idea that response contents systematically echoes self-perception contents. However, identification theory has not always been proven true (e.g., Mormont & Fontan, 2017). Moreover, the way these ideas are used in certain approaches tends to purely obliterate the fact that the cards present their own features and reality. The main goal of our contribution is to argue for a clarified conceptualization of the test, which would enable us to handle the ‘subjectivist’ (internalist) trap (Fuchs, 2007) and to consider the subject/environment interaction in an adjusted way. For this purpose, we propose to mobilize the notion of affordance (Gibson, 1966, 1979), which is nowadays more and more employed in psychopathology and in cognitive sciences but has hardly been considered as far as the Rorschach is concerned. Through one brief clinical example, the idea of the Rorschach as an apperceptive test (Englebert, 2013) will be discussed, as well as considerations regarding notions of projection and identification.