2002 issue 4

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Volume 11, issue 4

Schizophrenia

Diagnostic value of same response and percept categories that occur during the Rorschach testing – part 1

Anna Hunca-Bednarska1
1. Klinika Psychiatrii Akademii Medycznej w Lublinie
Postępy Psychiatrii i Neurologii, 2002, 11, 339-348
Keywords: schizophrenia, Rorschach test, thinking disorders, affectivity

Abstract

The Rorschach method was used to assess 75 patients with paranoid or simple schizophrenia and 63 healthy persons. The two groups were compared in terms of frequency of the so-called "particular signs": fragmentation of precepts (Frgm), describing their size (size), emotional judgments (EmJ), and inductive reasoning (IndP). Schizophrenic patients significantly more often produced responses with expressed fragmentation of percepts; moreover, their responses were markedly more "dramatic" or drastic. These findings were interpreted as a manifestation of personality disintegration processes. The remaining "signs" did not differentiate between the experimental and control group, and their co-incidence with mental health or illness was often dependent on the plate of the test in response to which they had been produced, as well as on the respondent's sex. It seems especially interesting that the remaining three "signs" were sometimes associated with health rather than illness. In the literature on the Rorschach test the presence of all the jour "particular signs" is considered to be associated with pathology. Thus, not only a revision of views concerning such "signs" as "size", "EmJ" and "IndP" seems necessary, but also further more detailed research in this area.

Address for correspondence:
Adres: Dr Anna Hunca-Bednarska,
Klinika Psychiatrii Akademii Medycznej, ul. Abramowicka 2,
20-442 Lublin