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In 1937 Beck published a book entitled, Introduction to the Rorschach Method, A Manual of Personality Study. In spite of the title the reader was assumed to be more or less familiar with the test. In the present volume, Basic Processes, the author offers a detailed presentation of the experimental procedure, of the single factors, and of the scoring. The volume comprises sixteen chapters and appendices.
Beck states in his preface: 'The sole purpose here is to provide students with a moderately steady frame of reference'. Dr. W. L. Valentine, in his foreword, goes even further: 'This is a reference book for student and expert alike. As such it is technical, exhaustive, detailed. Each basic problem in scoring is given a separate chapter. As the scoring precepts are developed, card by card, examples of the scoring procedure are given, so that the student does not have to thumb through records searching for examples.'
It was the reviewer's task to probe the clinical material and the statistical method, on which the scoring of the 'literally thousands of detailed and individual responses' is based.
As sources of the responses the author used: patients in milder mental disturbance; adults in the community at large, comprising persons of average, high average and very superior intelligence, overtly in good mental health; adults in psychoanalytic treatment; General Hospital patients; patients in acute schizophrenic disorganizations; a small group of patients with brain pathology. Thus, the subjects whose records were used represent a mixture of overtly sick and of doubtfully healthy people in an unknown proportion. Such clinical material used as a basis for standardizing values of single factors is definitely objectionable, because standards which