Hermann Rorschach (ror-shock), a Swiss Psychiatrist, created a test to measure thought disorder in the year 1921. Exner, in the late 1960s, would standardize interpretation. This test relies on the imagination. Exner theorized that when the subject of the test began to add information that wasn’t in the inkblot, that the subject was projecting and revealing information about themselves and how they see the world. According to psychcentral.com, the test reveals the subject’s perceptual accuracy, flexibility of ideas and attitudes, and the ability to temper and control his/her emotions. Among other things, the Rorschach test is theorized to reveal patients afflicted by schizophrenia. According to mentalhealthamerica.net, “Someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary, may be unresponsive or withdrawn and may have difficulty expressing normal emotions in social situations.”
From a social scientis
t’s perspective, I think that the 2016 United States Presidential election cycle has been a curious affair, indeed. There are many people whom I otherwise respect and enjoy, but when the Rorschach test of politics is administered, I suddenly cannot relate and begin to question the person’s sanity. I am quite confident that the other person feels the same way about me when I open up and share my thoughts and perceptions.
This election is at once interesting and deeply disturbing. We people of America can find news outlets that reinforce what we and our tribe believes about the major candidates. It appears that people gravitate to a chosen tribe in social media settings, and perhaps from the faux bravery of the remote keypad we may really give the person who disagrees with our perception a piece of our mind; perhaps that piece that we give away is one we cannot not afford to lose. Social media appears to be less about a place of exchanging ideas and more of a place where we reinforce our perception of the world.
Back to the test and what the test may indicate. The symptoms of schizophrenia include: delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking and speech, and disorganized behavior. The layman can detect these symptoms when a person believes false ideas, that someone may be spying on them, that he or she is hearing things that do not exist, moves from topic to topic in a nonsensical fashion, makes up his/her own words or sounds, and/or repeats words and ideas over and over.
Most voters have a deep sense that this election is profoundly consequential, and that the other major candidate is going to ruin America. Our great nation has been profoundly tested. Abraham Lincoln spoke these words in The Gettysburg Address, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Is America there again? I hope not. We will not know until we look back.
The consequences of this election include America’s standing on the world stage, the domestic realities of Supreme Court appointments, and the all-important reality that we are one nation, and we return to a homeostasis where civil discourse and vital exchange of ideas is possible? Oh, how I yearn for civility. Oh, how I hope that we will not be doomed to repeat history. Oh, how I yearn for a government where all three branches are able and willing to function in unison for the common good.
What is the 2016 election all about? It may well be about us. It may be a combination of the Rorschach Test where we project ourselves and mirror who we are as individuals and as a collective.
Take the test at http://www.theinkblot.com/.