Traumatic Human Movement in the Rorschach: Empirical Findings on Traumatic Mentalization Among Children

Human movement responses (M) are traditionally described as a major Rorschach variable which is related to psychological abilities of mentalization, regulation, and empathy. However, different studies described elevation of M in the Rorschach of trauma victims. The present study aimed to assess a different quality of M responses that are associated with traumatic experiences and thus define a new empirical variable of traumatic human movement response (trauM). We compared Rorschach trauM responses of three clinical groups of 104 children: complex trauma, single trauma, and nontraumatized patients. As expected, we found a higher frequency of trauM in complex trauma than in single trauma and a higher frequency of trauM in single trauma than in nontraumatized patients. In addition, the trauM had a larger effect size than the Critical Contents in its ability to differentiate between complex trauma and nontraumatized patients and between single trauma and nontraumatized patients. We concluded that the trauM is an important index in the assessment of trauma in children and suggested that this variable reflects a certain mental activity of “traumatic mentalization.” Clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.