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The present study applies Winnicott's conceptualization of potential space (1971) to explore the similarity between psychosomatics and psychosis, through using a new Rorschach index, the Reality-Fantasy Scale, or RFS (Tibon, Handelzalts, and Weinberger 2005). Following Smith (1990), who interprets the Rorschach in terms of Ogden's model (1985) of different forms of collapse of potential space, the RFS operationalizes this model by using variables derived from the Comprehensive System, or CS (Exner 2003), the most widely used method for scoring and interpreting the Rorschach.
Participants. In Study A (N = 76), participants included 41 adult nonpatients and 35 adult psychiatric patients with a referral question concerning psychosis. In Study B (N = 92), participants were Italian adult medical patients with Irritable Bowel Disease, IBD, usually con sidered a psychosomatic disease, who were included in a Rorschach study of alexithymia (Porcelli and Meyer 2002).
Measures. The Reality-Fantasy Scale (RFS) consists of a group of CS variables used to assess the input of reality and fantasy in the Rorschach response (Tibon, Handelzalts, and Weinberger 2005). The CS variables were included in the RFS following a theory-based selection and a comprehensive item-level analysis. The 11-point scale ranges from -5 (reality collapse into fantasy) to +5 (fantasy collapse into reality). An RFS score of -5 represents extreme reliance on fantasy and is given to responses with minimum contact with external reality (e.g., It is a bat. Oh … it is approaching toward me). An RFS score of +5, on the other hand, represents extreme reliance on reality and is given to responses with minimal input of fantasy (e.g., This looks like a cloud because of its shape). The RFS scoring of each response of a Rorschach protocol and the RFS mean and standard deviation of the protocol (RFSP and RFS-S respectively) are calculated by the RFS software (Tibon and Suchowski 2005).
The Ego Impairment Index, EII-2