General: H. Rorschach. Posthumous publication, edited by E. Oberholzer Zur Auswertung des Formdeutversuches für die Psychoanalyse. Zeitschrift für die gesamten Neurologie und Psychiatrie, Bd. LXXXII.

This is the last work of H. Rorschach, whose premature death we have to regret; it is the completion and continuation of his Psychodiagnostik, published in 1921, in which he communicated the method and the results of an experiment in diagnosis based on the perceptions of the subject. The experiment, which consisted in causing the subject to interpret chance figures (symmetrical ink-blots), showed that the interpretations of the sheets of figures displayed had a quite definite symptomatic value. In the Psychodiagnostik Rorschach explains a number of the most important of these indications at which he arrived by a purely empirical method. Thus it was demonstrated that kinæsthesis (the interpretation of the figures as being in motion) represented the subjectivity, the introversive elements, in the person interpreting, while 'colour-answers' (interpretations influenced by the colour of the smudge) represented affectivity. From the pure 'form-answers' (interpretation influenced only by the form of the smudge), taken in conjunction with other factors, it was possible to infer the scope and nature of the subject's trained thinking, whilst from the relation of kinæsthesis to colour-interpretation the power and scope of the artistic thinking could be deduced.

In the present work Rorschach describes in detail the technique of interpretation, which he had not given fully in the Psychodiagnostik; in this connection he explains two new types of answer and their symptomatic meaning. The rest of the book is written in collaboration with E. Oberholzer, and in it the writers estimate the importance for psychoanalysis of their experiment in the interpretation of forms.

The account of the technique begins with a description and statistics of the answers of subjects in the experiment. Two new terms are introduced; Helldunkeldeutung (chiaroscuro interpretation) and Vulgärantwort (answer in common terms). From the subsequent elucidation of the results we learn that the 'common answe