( or ; 8 November 1884 – 1 April 1922) was a Swiss Freudian psychiatrist
, best known for developing a projective test
known as the Rorschach inkblot test
. This test was reportedly designed to reflect unconscious parts of the personality that "project" onto the stimuli. Individuals were shown 10 inkblots, one at a time, and asked to report what objects or figures they saw in each of them.
Rorschach was born in Zürich
and spent his childhood and youth in Schaffhausen
. He became known to his high school friends as Klecks, or "inkblot" since, like many other young people in his native country, he enjoyed Klecksography, the making of fanciful inkblot "pictures." Unlike his classmates, however, Rorschach would go on to make inkblots his life's work.
Like his father, an art teacher, Rorschach engaged in painting and drawing conventional pictures. When it was time for him to graduate from high school, he could not decide between a career in art and one in science. He wrote a letter to the famous German
biologist Ernst Haeckel
asking his advice. The scientist suggested science, and Rorschach enrolled in medical school at the University of Zurich
. Rorschach began learning Russian, and in 1906, while studying in Berlin, he went for a holiday in Russia. Rorschach graduated in medicine at Zurich in 1909 and... Read More