Introduction to the Rorschach Method. (A Manual of Personality Study.): By Samuel J. Beck, Ph.D. Monograph No. 1 of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, 1937. 278 pp.

During the past five years interest in the Rorschach test in this country has increased rapidly to the point where at the present time not only are there frequent publications on the test in the standard psychiatric and psychological journals, but even a separate Rorschach Research Exchange dealing solely with technical and other problems of the method. Most of the English and American workers in this field, however, have been more at home in academic psychology than in clinical psychiatry, and it is perhaps for this reason that the practical diagnostic and prognostic value of the test, as well as its many theoretical implications for the study of normal and abnormal personality structure and functioning, are still unknown to the majority of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts.

Dr. Beck's monograph, the result of many years of painstaking work with the test, is concerned primarily with problems of technique, particularly with the establishment of more objective norms in scoring. He states that 'the sole aim of the present volume is to provide a manual of Rorschach test procedure as followed by the writer and intended to be helpful in the practical application of Rorschach tests, whether in experimental or diagnostic undertakings… Theoretical discussion is conspicuous by absence.' It will be apparent from this quotation that the book cannot well serve as a general introduction to the Rorschach method for those individuals who have neither the time nor the interest to become Rorschach practitioners, but who wish to be able to evaluate its potentialities in psychiatric and psychological practice and theory. For the active Rorschach worker, however, whether beginner or expert, the volume is a valuable addition to the literature. The main body of the text consists of fifty-nine complete Rorschach response records, scored and interpreted, with comments on some of the difficulties involved in these procedures. The material selected comprises healthy adults of superior i