title: Rorschach missing responses--is this more than nothing?
abstract: The Rorschach has been demonstrated as a suitable tool for investigating otherwise hidden psychological aspects of sex offenders: sex-related responses are more common. The present paper looks at the established tendency of some clients to minimise their overall Rorschach responding, the linking of this response restraint to particular Rorschach profiles, and the sparse but consistent literature which casts doubt on the proposition that Examiner enthusiasm will cause the minimising client to provide more responses which divulge additional information. In the case of sex offenders, with so much to hide, it is proposed that there may be extensive filtering of responses even among those giving more than "normal" sex-related responses. "What the client did not say", and the corresponding "missing" Rorschach responses in the case of sex offenders is discussed in the light of an individual case: (a sex offender with undue interest in young boys' penii) where "sex-like" images were specifically targeted, but never named as such. The exciting prospect of inferring what the client could have said and thus generating the content of missing responses, whether or not response filtering produced numerical minimisation, must be balanced against the risk of naked men and women (and their genitalia) representing nothing more than an artefact of the clinician's own making--"ce qui n' est pas le cas".
authors.affiliation: Sunshine City Medical Centre, Victoria, Australia. mgking@tpg.com.au
authors.forename: M G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: King
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008189:Luxembourg; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012392:Rorschach Test; D012742:Sex Offenses / Q000523:psychology*; D012725:Sexual Behavior