Ludwig Binswanger’s Comments on Hermann Rorschach’s Psychodiagnostik

Introduction

Rorschach’s Psychodiagnostik was first published 100 years ago, in 1921. Less than a year later, Rorschach died suddenly, in the early stages of what would have undoubtedly been an illustrious career. The publication of Psychodiagnostik provoked some immediate response, mostly unsympathetic. Ludwig Binswanger and Hermann Rorschach were trained by Eugen Bleuler at the University of Zurich Medical School and colleagues in the Swiss Psychiatric Society (Hoffmann, 1996a) in the decade before Rorschach’s untimely death. Binswanger trained at the Burgholzli Clinic under Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung. Rorschach’s correspondence with Binswanger in January–February 1922 reflects their warm, collegial relationship, Binswanger’s critical response to Psychodiagnostik, and Rorschach’s appreciative replies. The previously untranslated correspondence and Binswanger’s Bemerkungen published the following year provide a window into the status of Rorschach’s test in the context of early twentieth-century philosophy, experimental psychology, and psychiatry.

Binswanger’s detailed letter to Rorschach on 5 January 1922 (letter 209) congratulated him on the innovation and scientific rigour of his monograph (Rorschach, Muller and Signer, 2004: 392). Binswanger first acknowledges receipt of Behn-Eschenburg’s dissertation (1921) completed under Rorschach’s supervision and published almost simultaneously with Psychodiagnostik. He then chides Rorschach for his materialistic associationist psychology of perception. ¹ Binswanger firmly rejected Rorschach’s reliance on association psychology and advised him to examine the tradition of work issuing from Edmund Husserl (Galison, 2004: 273).

Binswanger recommended to Rorschach, and later sent him, a book by Narziss Ach (1910), entitled Über den Willensakt und das Temperament. Ach was a student of Oscar Kulpe (founder of the Würzburg school of imageless thought, a brilliant experimental psychologist and student of Wilhelm Wundt). Ach was then a colleague of Kraepelin in the psychological laboratory at Heidelberg University, and a brilliant experimentalist. Binswanger suggested Ach’s work as an alternative conceptualization of inkblot productions. Ach focused on the phenomenological act of the will making use of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (Spiegelberg, 1972: 63). In his letter to Rorschach (letter 209, 5 Jan. 1922), Binswanger reminds Rorschach that he needed to get out of Rorschach’s self-described ‘scientific autism’ and encouraged him to gradually put the test theory on a broader basis. Binswanger invites Rorschach to consider his soon to be published book, Einführung in die Probleme der allgemeinen Psychologie (1922). In a follow-up letter (letter 215, 24 Jan. 1922), Rorschach offers his warm thanks, and indicates his interest in and intention to examine Ach’s book to extend his thinking about the test, again citing his scientific ‘autism’. He requests information about eidetic images, and writes that he looks forward to Binswanger’s book. In their last collegial exchange on 3 February 1922 (letter 220), Rorschach acknowledges receipt of Ach’s book, and repeats that he anticipates the publication of Binswanger’s book. There the correspondence ends. Rorschach’s life was cut short within months due to peritonitis. His death was a shock to his family and deeply lamented by the Swiss psychiatric community.

Binswanger’s ‘comments’ were originally given in a presentation to the Swiss Psychiatric Society in the months following Rorschach’s death, and later published in Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, edited by Sigmund Freud (Binswanger, 1923). These comments have not been republished since then. Together with the January 1922 letters, a recently translated history of the Swiss Psychiatric Society (Hoffmann, 1996a, 1996b), and history of the development of psychoanalysis in Zurich (Wieser, 2001), Binswanger’s comments throw open previously closed vistas on the sources and potential developments of Rorschach’s test (Acklin, 2021), cut short by his untimely, even tragic demise.

These new vistas include a reconsideration of Rorschach’s intellectual and scientific milieu, the influences – direct and indirect – of his colleagues, and the exciting turn-of-the-century developments taking place in philosophy and experimental psychology in France, Germany and Switzerland. It is an interesting conjecture as to how the course of Rorschach psychology might have been influenced by the availability of Binswanger’s comments and ongoing collegiality (Acklin and Oliveira-Berry, 1996; Ellenberger, 1954; Exner, 1960).

In his comments, Binswanger laments the sudden death of his young colleague and references Rorschach’s investigations in psychoanalysis, psychology, ethnography, and the history of religious sects. He lauds Rorschach’s intellectual versatility, and praises the Formdeuterversuch’s clever integration of scientific method, penetrating insight into human psychology, and sharp logical thinking.

Binswanger mentions Behn-Eschenburg’s dissertation (1921) – a companion project which validates the findings from Psychodiagnostik, and Rorschach’s last presentation to the Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis just a few weeks before his death (Rorschach and Oberholzer, 1923). Binswanger praises the lecture, ‘On the evaluation of the interpretation of forms for psychoanalysis’, as a clinically practical complement to and illustration of Psychodiagnostik. ²

Binswanger places the research in the context of the psychology of the perception of forms, research on psychological typologies, and constitutional psychology. He praises Rorschach’s ability to use simple, even primitive, methods to reveal complex relationships and raise new problems. He comments on the limited foundation of Rorschach’s test theory, also noting Rorschach brilliant application of a few general mechanical-material and associative psychological concepts and schemata.

Binswanger states that Rorschach concurs – as his letters to Binswanger reveal – that the experiment was unsatisfactory in terms of its scientific presentation and detail. Binswanger criticizes Rorschach’s lack of familiarity with modern experimental psychology. Rorschach gladly admitted that his theoretical views were undeveloped and incomplete. Binswanger expresses reservations as to whether the inkblot test is truly an experiment in perception diagnostics, criticizing Rorschach’s materialistic theory of perception, and states that ‘it is more of a test of optical and kinaesthetic fantasy or imagination than of perception’. ³ Binswanger demonstrates his familiarity with the Jung-Riklin word-association experiments, Husserl’s act psychology, Jung’s complex theory, and the field of eidetic sensory images as potential sources for understanding the inkblot test. Binswanger observes that limitations in the conceptual and theoretical foundations do not affect the practical diagnostic results of the test, however. He makes it clear that the test had significant potential for scientific and clinical development. Binswanger cites criticisms of Psychodiagnostik, especially the sharp criticisms of German experimental psychologist Hans Henning in 1921 (letter 206, Rorschach et al., 2004: 386–9). In his letter to Rorschach, Henning criticizes his perception theory, and suggests that eidetic sensory images would augment Rorschach’s theory of the test. Henning severely criticized Rorschach’s ideas about the psychological meaning of kinaesthesia ⁴ and criticizes Rorschach for ignoring Gestalt psychology as the basis for perception (Akavia, 2013: 32–3).

Binswanger also indicates his awareness of controversies in the field of kinaesthetic sensations and perception. Binswanger pays specific attention to the ‘movement input’ and challenges Rorschach’s notions of ‘kinaesthetic sensations’, noting especially that, for Rorschach, movement must not be merely imitated; it is not merely a case of reproductive perception, of motor reproduction, ‘but rather of a primary, vivid experience of movement’. He states, ‘Empathy (Lipps), both in the sense of aesthetic empathy and as self-objectification, also plays a large role here’. ⁵ He criticizes weaknesses in Rorschach’s assertion that kinaesthesias belong to the deepest unconscious. Nevertheless, he praises Rorschach for his diagnostic brilliance in the psychological and clinical sense.

Despite weaknesses in the kinaesthetic theory articulated in Psychodiagnostik, Binswanger praises Rorschach’s development of kinaesthesia – ‘with its relation to intelligence, affectivity, and motility as among the most interesting and engaging points in all of his work’. ⁶ He makes it clear that the test is not simply a sensory diagnostic experiment based on the interpretation of random forms. Binswanger notes that the brilliance of the test, in addition to a test of perception, is the test’s ability to conceptualize empathy and its types. He emphasizes the foundations of the theory that have informed Rorschach research and clinical practice for 100 years.

Probably influenced by Jung’s highly psychological typology, Rorschach introduced two ideal types of phenomenological experience: introversive and extratensive – the Erlebnistypus – as an indicator of the individual’s inner life (Akavia, 2013: 13–14). Binswanger finds Rorschach’s typology worthy of detailed comment, noting that it encompasses individual intellectual and affective functions and the total attitude of the subject toward the test, and provides a view of the structure of the whole person. Binswanger notes that the way that Rorschach analysed the relationships of the colour and form responses, and interpreted and made practical use of these relationships, opened up an entirely new field of psychological facts and connections.

Binswanger distinguishes Rorschach’s inkblot test from the inkblot work of Szymon Hens (1917), also supervised by Bleuler, since it provides more meaningful and illuminates the immanent psychological laws. He praises the psychoanalyst Rorschach as an empathetic authority on human experience and a worthy partner as a theoretician of psychological functioning. Binswanger locates Rorschach’s work in the context of the psychiatric clinic and medical psychology as defined by Kraepelin, Bleuler, Freud, Breuer, Jung and Janet. He reiterates the necessity of the empirical validation of Rorschach’s findings, stating that, as subtle and ground-breaking as Rorschach’s findings may be, they still require conceptual and scientific validation.

Returning to Rorschach’s theorizing on psychological typologies, Binswanger notes that Rorschach remains focused on individual subjectivity. He states, ‘Unfamiliar with Husserl’s phenomenology, which offers complete clarity here, he seeks the specifically personal in instinct, in the libido of individual dispositions or registers of the mental apparatus.’ Binswanger makes his own theoretical linkages here, referencing Freud in this context, and commenting that ‘instinct turns dispositional moments into active tendencies’. He notes that Rorschach’s test joins Jung’s experiments with associations that have a particular relevance to psychoanalysis. ⁷

Binswanger refers to Rorschach’s last presentation to the Swiss Psychiatric Society, a blind test interpretation of a clinical case analysed by Oberholzer, noting Rorschach’s success in demonstrating how psychoanalysis can bring about the transformation of affect and character. He places Rorschach’s work in the context of clinical psychiatry of Birnbaum, Jaspers, Kretschmer and others. He notes Rorschach’s interesting questions on manifest or latent schizophrenia, including schizoid personality disorder, noting the sensitivity of the test to the detect catatonics who have been completely cured, or the presence of possible symptoms in parents or siblings.

Binswanger concludes that Rorschach’s Psychodiagnostik opens up a macrocosm of scientific, medical, and especially psychiatric, psychological thinking. Psychodiagnostik and its underpinnings nevertheless deserve a detailed dissection to reveal what is scientifically problematic and questionable about it. In his most powerful observation, Binswanger recognizes what Rorschach himself had only perhaps dimly perceived: the ‘interpretation of random forms’ is not exclusively a ‘sensory-diagnostic’ experiment. In addition to being a test of ability to perceive, it is also a test of ability to empathize.

This relatively brief exegesis of Binswanger’s 1923 text yields a surprising, even profound, set of discoveries, raising interesting questions about what other surprises may be found in a more systematic approach to the translation of Rorschachiana, such as Behn-Eschenburg (1921), published a few weeks after Rorschach’s Psychodiagnostik, Binder (1944) and Kuhn (1944), and Rorschach’s published but untranslated correspondence with Bleuler, Morgenthaler, Roemer and Oberholzer (in progress). Binswanger’s comments illuminate the road not taken, grounding the test in phenomenological philosophy and psychology, a tool for psychological and psychiatric theorizing rather than the ossified technology that it has become (Akavia, 2013:10).

Binswanger’s text, silent in English for 100 years, creates new opportunities to locate Rorschach’s work in the context of his milieu and offers exciting directions for the reconsideration and reframing the philosophical foundations of the Rorschach test.