IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB113900547

Seeing Inside the Child: The Rorschach Inkblot Test as Assessment Technique in a Girls’ Reform School, 1938–1948 (2020)

Bultman, Saskia (Author)

History of Psychology
Volume: 23
Issue: 4
Pages: 312-332

URI: http://search.proquest.com/docview/2430715988/abstract/953E17575A844A43PQ/1

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Primary and secondary education Children Psychological tests Rorschach test 20th century, early Netherlands

This article examines the practice of Rorschach testing as it was applied in a Dutch reform school for girls in the mid-20th century. Considering the assessment technique of Rorschach testing as an “examination” in the Foucauldian sense, this article investigates what type of identity was brought into being for the girls who were tested. Inspired by the praxiographic approach to trace the practices involved in testing, it shows that the Rorschach enacted a wholly new conception of the delinquent girl. Through the test, the reform school pupils were conceptualized as individuals with a literal inner realm, populated with drives, complexes and neuroses, which were said to shape their misbehavior. This notion of interiority was, strikingly enough, a rhetorical construction on the part of the psychologist, but was also produced as a reality in the practices surrounding the test. The article argues that, in the reform school, Rorschach testing not only served to assess the pupils’ reeducability—a lesser known application of the Rorschach, particular to this reformatory context—but also served to govern them, precisely through its enactment of interiority. Through the practices of the test, a situation was created that suggested that the psychologist knew something about the girl that she herself did not; it was the creation of this “secret”–which forced pupils to look inside themselves—that placed the psychologist in a position of power. Utilizing the underused source of test reports, the article explores an application of Rorschach testing that has received little attention, further highlighting the test’s versatility and power. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB113900547/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Chapter Roberts, Lissa L.; (2011)
Instruments of Science and Citizenship: Science Education for Dutch Orphans during the Late Eighteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001024416/)

Article Pâquet, Martin; Boivin, Jérôme; (2007)
La mesure fait loi. La doctrine de l'hygiène mentale et les tests psychométriques au Québec pendant l'entre-deux-guerres (/isis/citation/CBB001030866/)

Book Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke; Marland, Hilary; (2003)
Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century (/isis/citation/CBB000771220/)

Article Bakker, Nelleke; de Beer, Fedor; (2009)
The Dangers of Schooling: The Introduction of School Medical Inspection in the Netherlands (c. 1900) (/isis/citation/CBB001231202/)

Article Bakker, Nelleke; (2013)
“Gezonde buitenlucht” en “krachtige voeding”: kinderen en de anti-tuberculosecampagne in Nederland (ca. 1910--1940) (/isis/citation/CBB001213263/)

Article Byford, Andy; (2014)
The Mental Test as a Boundary Object in Early-20th-Century Russian Child Science (/isis/citation/CBB001451513/)

Article David Robertson; (2018)
Evaluating the Aboriginal child’s mind: assimilation and cross-cultural psychology in Australia (/isis/citation/CBB567097528/)

Article Schilling, Rebecca; Casper, Stephen T.; (2015)
Of Psychometric Means: Starke R. Hathaway and the Popularization of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (/isis/citation/CBB001552003/)

Book Phillips, Christopher J.; (2014)
The New Math: A Political History (/isis/citation/CBB001422025/)

Article Nelleke Bakker; (2016)
Monitoring Child Health: School Doctors at Work in a Dutch Rural Area (1930–1970) (/isis/citation/CBB900265951/)

Essay Review Herman, Ellen; (2001)
How Children Turn Out and How Psychology Turns Them Out (/isis/citation/CBB000100117/)

Article Helene Ratner; (2016)
Modern Settlements in Special Needs Education: Segregated Versus Inclusive Education (/isis/citation/CBB214311922/)

Article Thalassis, Nafsika; (2010)
Useless Soldiers: The Dilemma of Discharging Mentally Unfit Soldiers during the Second World War (/isis/citation/CBB000932834/)

Article Coombs, David Sweeney; (2012)
An Untrained Eye: The Tachistoscope and Photographic Vision in Early Experimental Psychology (/isis/citation/CBB001210229/)

Article Stolk, Vincent; (2012)
“De dageraad der natuurwetenschappen, ook in de volksschool.” Wetenschap, vormingsidealen en vrijdenken in het lager onderwijs (1855--1870) (/isis/citation/CBB001252775/)

Article Holmes, Marcia E.; (2014)
The Psychologist and the Bombardier: The Army Air Forces' Aircrew Classification Program in WWII (/isis/citation/CBB001214333/)

Article Yu-chuan, Wu; (2012)
Disappearing Anger: Fujisawa Shigeru's Psychological Experiments on Aborigines in the Late Colonial Period (/isis/citation/CBB001251506/)

Article Miller, Jason; Casper, Stephen T.; (2015)
Dredging and Projecting the Depths of Personality: The Thematic Apperception Test and the Narratives of the Unconscious (/isis/citation/CBB001552000/)

Article Roberts, Lissa L.; (2012)
Instruments of Science and Citizenship: Science Education for Dutch Orphans During the Late Eighteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001220437/)

Article Feike Dietz; (2019)
Mediated Education in Early Modern Travel Stories: How Travel Stories Contribute to Children’s Empirical Learning (/isis/citation/CBB281630422/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}