Customer Reviews

The Rorschach, Basic Foundations and Principles of Interpretation Volume 1

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As a clinical psychologist who uses the Rorschach regularly and teaches it to graduate students, I have always relied upon this volume as a bible of sorts for all-things-Rorschach. The newest edition is a wonderful updating of the classic. Despite being about the same number of pages as the last edition, this volume packs much more information in, and is written in a more concise and relevant way. Exner has updated some of the historical lore regarding Hermann and the roots of his test, as well as incorporating a full chapter on controversies surrounding the Rorschach. Furthermore, the interpretive section is modeled after the format of the very useful Primer on Rorschach Interpretation, and incorporates all of the recent changes and innovations in the Comprehensive System. This volume could easily be the "one stop shop" for Rorschachers, as it has normative data, administration and scoring guidelines, and a well-organized interpretive section. Who could ask for more?

The Rorschach, and also the Comprehensive System (RCS), has been inadvertently criticised - continuosly - although the research associated with the reliability and validity of the method has increadingly accumulated during the years - and in particular in the late 90's. However, as Kubiszyn (?) et al. recently have written, this research is not all that easily found, nor is it for the ordinary clinician particularly easy to read and understand, part of it being so complex and statistically advanced. Therefore, this book - published by Wiley in 2003 - is so important. It not only gives the development and structure of the RCS, nor the strategy of cluster analysis, but the book contains hundreds of well conducted bot reliability and in particular validity studies, aggregated in proper places where the different variables and ratios are described - and this is an immense improvement as compare to the 1993 (3rd) edition. I, who am the person primarily responsible for convincing people in Finland of how well the RCS functions - as well as teaching psychologists to mastery - am extremely grateful for all the additional and well organized research published here. When I wrote a about 20 pages review of reliability and validity for the Yearbook Rorschachiana 2003 this would have bene an assed to have - now I am primarily using it in an RCS educational program (165 lectures)in Finland. I am also producing an excerpt of probably some 50-60 singlespaced pages in Finnish regarding in particular the most important peaces of scientific work, confirming the reliability and validity reseacrh related to the RCS!

The Exner coding system can be daunting to learn at first. Out of the three textbooks used in my projective course, this text was by far the best. The introductory chapter discusses the test's background in an interesting manner. The remaining chapters provide guidance to coding and interpretation. The book is well-organized with numerous examples interspersed throughout the text. There are also 6 complete protocols of varying complexity for additional coding practice. I found these sample items to be more consistent with one another and clear-cut than the practice coding items in the Exner workbook.

Overall- highlight, tab, write all over this book, and keep it always within reaching distance.

I think this volume was way too wordy and contains too much information. The text could have been streamlined tremendously.

The book came in a timely manner and arrived in new condition exactly as I ordered it. Very pleased.