Aarati Asundi (00:12) Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Smart Tea Podcast, where we talk about the lives of scientists and innovators who shape the world. I'm Aarati. Jyoti Asundi (00:21) And I'm her mom Jyoti. Aarati Asundi (00:22) So today, mom, we're going to be talking about a guy who's been on my list for a very long time. His name is Hermann Rorschach, and he is, of course, the famous psychologist behind the inkblot test. Jyoti Asundi (00:39) Rorschach! Oh this sounds exciting already! Aarati Asundi (00:42) Yeah we're combining two of my favorite subjects, art and science. Jyoti Asundi (00:45) Yes. Art and science. Yes. I think he used them for something like you draw a blob and you ask the person what does it look like? Aarati Asundi (00:54) Yes. what do you see in it? Jyoti Asundi (00:56) What do you see and somebody sees a woman and somebody sees a spider or something like that, right? Aarati Asundi (01:00) Yes, yes. Jyoti Asundi (01:01) Okay, okay, I'm with you. All right. Aarati Asundi (01:01) So it's all like about your interpretation of what you see in the inkblots. Jyoti Asundi (01:06) What do you see? Yes, yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (01:07) Yes. But it's actually a lot more nuanced than that. Jyoti Asundi (01:13) of course. Aarati Asundi (01:14) I just thought it was kinda random. But yeah, it does turn out it's a bit more nuanced than that. So we're going to kind of get into it. Jyoti Asundi (01:20) Alright. Exciting. And maybe then at the end we can figure out if we are crazy and see see weird things in the blots or are we... Aarati Asundi (01:30) Yeah, normal or not? Jyoti Asundi (01:31) Yeah, we we're supposed to see a spider, but we actually end up seeing a beautiful woman there. It's like, "Oh this woman is nuts. Something is wrong with her." Aarati Asundi (01:39) Yeah, so we're gonna get into some of those in interesting interpretations and things like that today. Jyoti Asundi (01:45) Yes. This sounds like a lot of fun. Let's do it. Aarati Asundi (01:48) Yes. Okay, so we're starting as always with his childhood. Hermann was born on November 8th, 1884. Jyoti Asundi (01:57) Oh goodness! You share your birthday with Hermann Rorschach? Aarati Asundi (02:02) Yes, I do. Jyoti Asundi (02:03) The ink blot guy. Alright. Aarati Asundi (02:04) Apparently I also share my birthday with Gordon Ramsay, the chef. Jyoti Asundi (02:09) I always knew you were multi-talented and I have already.... Aarati Asundi (02:11) Yeah. Art, science, and cooking, apparently. Jyoti Asundi (02:14) Yes and I have tasted your cooking efforts and they are tremendously fantastic. So you are the cause of at least ten pounds on me. I would be ten pounds lighter if you were... Aarati Asundi (02:23) Great. Well, you know, just returning the favor, because you also are an excellent chef. Jyoti Asundi (02:30) That is true. Yes. That is true. That is true. Aarati Asundi (02:32) When it comes to Indian food, hands down, you're the best. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (02:36) Thank you. Aarati Asundi (02:38) So anyway, we are in Zurich, Switzerland, and Hermann is born to Ulrich and Philippine Rorschach. Jyoti Asundi (02:47) Okay. Aarati Asundi (02:48) He had two younger siblings, a sister named Anna and a brother named Paul. His father was a painter and art teacher and encouraged Hermann to be creative himself. Hermann had a very typical, happy childhood. He was a bit of a dreamer, he was very introspective even as a kid, and he loved listening to fairy tales. Jyoti Asundi (03:08) Who else do I know who is very introspective, love to listen to stories? Even now today fantasy is one of your favorite genres. Aarati Asundi (03:18) Yes, just I love it. You know, I can be in my own head for quite a while. So... And also he was very creative. He used his artistic skills to draw landscapes and people. He dabbled in wood carving and he wrote small plays and novels and even created architectural designs. Jyoti Asundi (03:36) Are you maybe reborn? Aarati Asundi (03:38) Maybe. Jyoti Asundi (03:38) Is it- are you Rorschach reborn? Because Aarati Asundi (03:39) I mean he was born like almost a hundred years before me, so Jyoti Asundi (03:44) Yes. You just finished a beautiful- couple of beautiful mosaics. Aarati Asundi (03:48) Yes, I've recently been dabbling in mosaics, so Jyoti Asundi (03:51) Yeah, so either he was your long ago twin or he has just come back to life here in my house. Aarati Asundi (03:57) Yes. Maybe one day I'll be as famous as him. Jyoti Asundi (04:00) I think you will. Aarati Asundi (04:03) So Hermann had a happy childhood until he was twelve years old when his mother died after a months long battle with diabetes. Jyoti Asundi (04:12) Oh no, oh no. Aarati Asundi (04:14) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (04:14) That was like early- late eighteen hundreds you said. So that's Aarati Asundi (04:18) Yes. And they didn't have insulin treatments or anything like that. Jyoti Asundi (04:22) Exactly. And maybe not even a complete understanding... Aarati Asundi (04:22) So there's really nothing they could do. Jyoti Asundi (04:25) Not even a complete understanding of the disease as to what do you do, how do you control your diet in order to mitigate the consequences of diabetes. None of that was known. Very sad. Aarati Asundi (04:36) Yes. So the family was devastated by her loss, but about two years later, Ulrich married Philippine's younger half sister, Regina, so their aunt. Jyoti Asundi (04:47) Okay. Aarati Asundi (04:48) They were married in 1899 and shortly after Regina gave birth to Hermann's half sister Regineli. But this relative peace also only lasted a few months because Ulrich started to develop severe symptoms of lead poisoning, likely from being a painter. Jyoti Asundi (05:07) Oh yes, those things were figured out much later. People died early for so many things that we take for granted these days. We just want to change the paint or we want to create an accent wall, we say and we go pick out a nice color, that's the fun part and then all of us gather together and paint that accent wall that we are looking at. And we don't even think of things like this, lead paint and all that. Aarati Asundi (05:34) Yeah. His illness lasted quite a while. He would feel dizzy and nauseous and he had to give up his teaching job because of this. Jyoti Asundi (05:42) Okay, yes. Aarati Asundi (05:43) And so Regina opened a small store selling fabrics and textiles in order to bring in some money. And then Hermann also had to start tutoring students in Latin to bring in more money. Jyoti Asundi (05:55) Okay. So he is now working at a very early age. He's not even sixteen probably at this point. Aarati Asundi (06:01) Yeah, so he's still going to school and then every day after school he would rush home to help Regina take care of his father. In between he's doing tutoring, so he's very, very busy. Jyoti Asundi (06:14) Already the childhood is left behind, he's moved on to become practically the man of the house bringing in the money and everything. Aarati Asundi (06:22) Mm-hmm. This lasted for a few years until Ulrich finally did succumb to his illness and died in 1903. So by that time Hermann is 18 and... Jyoti Asundi (06:33) Okay. Aarati Asundi (06:33) ...he is severely stressed out, exhausted and anxious from all of this going to school, tutoring, taking care of his father, taking care of his siblings, and... Jyoti Asundi (06:44) Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (06:44) ...he was so sick and exhausted that he couldn't even attend his father's funeral. Jyoti Asundi (06:50) Oh no. And that it must have been somewhat of a depression time as well, of course. So it's like I can't face yet another blow here. Because up to the very end, you know, they think he'll get better. This is temporary, he'll get better, and then I can go get my childhood back, life will become normal again, my dad will get better, and then finally he has to let go of that. This is it finality. The door has closed and you everything, the entire household falls on your shoulders. Aarati Asundi (07:21) Yes. But that feeling of helplessness that he felt when watching both of his parents get sick and pass and not being able to do anything about it... Jyoti Asundi (07:33) Yes. Aarati Asundi (07:33) ...that's kind of what started Hermann thinking seriously about becoming a doctor in order to help people. Jyoti Asundi (07:40) Yes. Aarati Asundi (07:41) But he didn't have any time to mourn. He was now, like we were saying, the man of the house practically. His stepmother Regina became very cold and calculating, always looking for more ways to make more money, and not letting the children take any time to do anything fun or imaginative. They were always having to do something productive. They had to be doing school, work, chores... Jyoti Asundi (08:04) Yeah, and I can't paint her in my own head as a wicked stepmother either because she's a widow with four children to take care of. She's the head of the household and she's got to she's got a huge burden on her shoulders that she did not expect. Aarati Asundi (08:21) Yes. And I totally get that. Like I totally do sympathize with that. Jyoti Asundi (08:26) Yes. Aarati Asundi (08:26) But for the children it was very hard because it's like she wasn't showing them a lot of love and affection. She was just constantly like nose to the grindstone. And so although I understand they did have that like she's turned into the wicked stepmother kind of feeling. Jyoti Asundi (08:44) Yeah, it feels like that, but it's coming from a place of extreme anxiety for her. I feel empathy. Aarati Asundi (08:50) And Hermann also understood and he tried to support his younger brother and sister, telling them not to resent her. But, it was extremely difficult to deal with. And she kind of just made all of their lives miserable, up to the point that even Hermann was like, I need to get away from this. This is just wearing me down. Jyoti Asundi (09:12) Yes. Aarati Asundi (09:13) Despite all of this though, Hermann was a great student, sometimes it seemed without even trying. And at school he was known for his skills in drawing, which interestingly earned him the nickname Klex, which is a German word meaning inkblot. Jyoti Asundi (09:29) Oh! Right from school because of his artistry he was called Klex, which means ink blot. So maybe his early artistry efforts were with ink as well. Aarati Asundi (09:41) I don't think he was making inkblots at the time. It was more just... Jyoti Asundi (09:44) Okay, but maybe he was using ink, a pen and ink, maybe? Aarati Asundi (09:48) Yeah I think the word translates to like ink stain or ink blot and so it was just the fact that he was probably constantly, dipping his pen in ink and drawing, so he always had ink on his fingers probably, and so they were calling him ink stain or inkblot. Jyoti Asundi (10:04) That's some nice foreshadowing there by his... Aarati Asundi (10:06) Very nice. Yes, very nice foreshadowing. After high school, it was very common for German-speaking Swiss students like him to go to Neuchâtel, which is a French-speaking area of Switzerland, to improve their French before heading to university. So Hermann also joined the program, thinking he would be able to become a tutor for French and Latin and earn extra money for his family. The program included a two-month course in Dijon, France. And here Hermann met with a Russian man, Ivan Mikhailovich Tregubov... Tregubov. Jyoti Asundi (10:45) Okay. And Dijon France as in the mustard. Aarati Asundi (10:49) Yes, Dijon is in the mustard. Yes. Jyoti Asundi (10:50) Probably as in the mustard, right? Sorry, sorry, my brain went off. Maybe I'm hungry and I'm thinking of food, but that's maybe weird. Aarati Asundi (10:56) Yeah, maybe Yes. Jyoti Asundi (10:58) Dijon France, yes. Aarati Asundi (10:59) But in Dijon, France, this Swiss guy Hermann Rorschach met a Russian man, Ivan Mikhailovich Tregubov, who was a personal friend of the author Tolstoy and a deep pacifist. Jyoti Asundi (11:14) okay. Aarati Asundi (11:14) So Hermann became deeply interested in Russian culture because of the ideas of Tolstoy in particular. Jyoti Asundi (11:23) Yes. Aarati Asundi (11:23) And he was particularly captured by the idea of living simply, working for peace, and healing your inner soul. And through this thinking, Hermann finally felt like he found his calling in psychology. He said, "I want to read people. What I want is to work at a madhouse. That is no reason not to get a complete training as a doctor, but the most interesting thing in nature is the human soul, and the greatest thing a person can do is to heal these souls, sick souls." Jyoti Asundi (11:57) That is so beautiful. And you know, it brings to my mind one other point that we are kind of- we seem to be passing by very quickly, and that is Hermann's multilingual abilities. And that gift is extremely important because then you're able to look at the world through multiple lenses, through different cultures as to how other cultures view the same thing, maybe. You become less insular. Aarati Asundi (12:27) Yeah, and I think there was, in Europe at that time, there was a much bigger emphasis on learning languages... Jyoti Asundi (12:34) Yes. Aarati Asundi (12:34) ...and he kind of did have a knack for it, and then his interest in Russia that is sparked now by this man that he met did prompt him to go learn Russian because he absolutely just fell in love with, you know, the culture, Russian culture. He was like, these Russians have it figured out and so he went all in on Russian culture, as we will see. Jyoti Asundi (12:58) Because you are now reading the original thoughts the way they were in that original language of some deep philosophers. Aarati Asundi (13:06) Yeah. And I think that was partly what Hermann was also realizing that, like if he wants to go into psychology, it's really important that you understand fully what the person is telling you. Jyoti Asundi (13:19) Yes. With the cultural context that comes with it. Aarati Asundi (13:21) Yes, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Jyoti Asundi (13:23) Yes. Yes. Aarati Asundi (13:25) So if they're saying like I believe that I'm this, you know, president of France from the 1700s and you don't understand what they're talking about or their culture, you're not gonna be able to treat them properly, you know? Jyoti Asundi (13:36) Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Aarati Asundi (13:39) So he really was understanding that and he was very smart. He did have a knack for languages, so he was able to pick up on this, you know Jyoti Asundi (13:46) Mm. Yeah, that's a gift as well, yes. Aarati Asundi (13:48) Yes. So, through tutoring and financial aid from the city, Hermann was finally able to scrape together enough money to go to medical school at the University of Zurich. He excelled in his courses, and in addition to the normal medical school classes, he's also studying psychology, which was a very new and active field at the time. People were just realizing that they couldn't hope to treat mental illness if they didn't know how it worked. And Zurich was widely considered the epicenter of psychology at the time. Hermann's professors included some of the biggest names in the field, like Eugen Bleuler, who was a highly controversial figure, but is credited with coining the terms schizophrenia and autism. And also Carl Jung, whose name is probably familiar. Jyoti Asundi (14:37) Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Aarati Asundi (14:39) He was a hugely influential psychologist and was particularly known for doing word association tests with his patients. Jyoti Asundi (14:47) Okay. Aarati Asundi (14:47) So you know, he would say a word like love or death or dream, and then ask the patient to say what was the first thing that popped into their head. And then based on what the patient's answer was, he would psychoanalyze them. Jyoti Asundi (15:01) Okay. Aarati Asundi (15:01) Sigmund Freud is also active at this time in psychiatry and psychology. Although he's in Vienna, but Hermann is obviously studying his papers as they come out as well, so it's quite a time to be studying psychology. Jyoti Asundi (15:15) Nice. Aarati Asundi (15:17) Zurich was also a very diverse city, and he continued to spend time especially with Russian people who lived there. By this time he had learned how to speak Russian pretty fluently, and he also met his future wife, who was a Russian woman named Olga Stemplin. She was a pharmacist's daughter and was also studying at Zurich Medical School and extremely smart. She also had a similar background to Hermann. She was the eldest of three children, and she also had to spend a lot of time earning extra money for her family by tutoring and taking care of her sick father. Jyoti Asundi (15:52) There's a lot of bonding going on there through that shared trauma. Aarati Asundi (15:57) Yes. And Hermann really admired her. He was a very staunch supporter of women's rights and education. And he felt that the Russians were much more open-minded about this than the rest of Western Europe. And for him, Olga's ambition and spirited nature was really just a confirmation of that. Jyoti Asundi (16:17) Yes. Aarati Asundi (16:18) In December of 1906, he had the chance to travel to Moscow, and he fell even more in love with Russia. In 1908, he even found a job for his younger sister Anna in Russia as a governess, and she was really excited to go live in the place that her older brother had, you know, hyped up so much and was just talking so excitedly about. Jyoti Asundi (16:41) Yes. Aarati Asundi (16:42) And so, because of that, he was able to kind of live vicariously through her as he finished up his studies in Switzerland. When he finally graduated, he tried desperately to find a way to move to Russia and he wanted to set up his career there. Olga, by now, had also finished medical school, and she was in Russia working to treat cholera and typhus patients. Jyoti Asundi (17:03) Okay. Aarati Asundi (17:04) So Hermann stayed with her and her family for several months trying to figure out how to make the move permanent. But ultimately it didn't work out. He couldn't easily transfer his credentials in psychology over to Russia without basically going back to school and retaking all the courses in Russian. And it also kind of goes back to that point that we were mentioning that he needed to have a much deeper understanding of Russian history if he was going to treat Russian patients. Jyoti Asundi (17:34) Yes, because he won't get the context of his patients otherwise. Aarati Asundi (17:38) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (17:39) Otherwise if he was just like a doctor of medicine of the body, then a stomach ulcer is a stomach ulcer and you know, cancer is cancer. Aarati Asundi (17:48) It might have been easier. I'm not a hundred percent sure how the credits all worked, but in psychology especially it was yeah, you can't you can't just transfer your credits over. Jyoti Asundi (17:59) That's right, it is his chosen field and he's not able to make the transition. Aarati Asundi (18:04) But also in those months, while he's trying to make this happen, his rose-colored glasses for Russia came off a bit. Jyoti Asundi (18:13) Okay. Aarati Asundi (18:14) He realized that sexism actually was still much stronger in Russian society than he had thought. Jyoti Asundi (18:20) I see. Aarati Asundi (18:20) It wasn't this like, you know, equal utopia that he was thinking where women are so highly regarded as equal to men. And also he found that living under a monarchy wasn't so great either compared to the Swiss Republic. Jyoti Asundi (18:33) Ah yes. That's a good point. Politically as well, that's right, not just socially, but politically as well, yeah. Aarati Asundi (18:41) Yeah. So he really went into Russia thinking, like, they have everything figured out. They're gonna be the next world power. They're just so amazing. And then he's like, actually, you know, they have they have some things they need to figure out too. So ultimately he left Russia to go back to Switzerland and he found a job working at an asylum in Munsterlingen. But he did promise one day to return to Russia. Jyoti Asundi (19:06) What happened to his sister in the meanwhile? Did she continue there or is there any indication? Aarati Asundi (19:10) Yeah, I think she stayed there for quite a while. I think later on she might have come back to Switzerland, much later on, but... Jyoti Asundi (19:16) Okay, but she did she did make it there. Aarati Asundi (19:19) Yeah, she- she did. But I was reading that she did wanna marry a officer, like a Russian military officer, and Hermann was like, Don't do that, because then you'll be tied forever to not only Russia, but also like their political system, 'cause you'll be like part of the military there. Jyoti Asundi (19:35) I see, so because by then his rose-colored glasses had fallen off, so he's advising his sister, don't make your life here. Aarati Asundi (19:44) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (19:45) All right. So now he comes back and he's got a job at a asylum. Aarati Asundi (19:49) Yes. After about six months, Olga was able to join him and they got married in Zurich in April 1910. The Munsterlingen Clinic was on the shores of Lake Constance, which you may remember is the same beautiful lake that Ferdinand von Zeppelin from episode 62 was launching his airships. Jyoti Asundi (20:12) Yes, I do remember that. Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (20:15) At the clinic, Hermann was treating a variety of patients suffering with schizophrenia, manic depression, hysteria, and other nervous illnesses. Jyoti Asundi (20:23) Okay. Aarati Asundi (20:24) He worked very hard to connect with his patients in any way possible, and he had a real knack for it. And I should mention his good looks didn't hurt either, especially with the female patients. Many people today compare him to looking like a young Brad Pitt, if that puts an image in your head. Jyoti Asundi (20:41) Oh yes, yes, yes. Very handsome guy. That definitely especially for the female patients, it would have been a bonus for the initial interaction, making that connection and building that trust. Yes. Aarati Asundi (20:56) Yes. He would put on elaborate plays or throw over the top parties for every holiday to bring his patients out of their paranoia or catatonic states. He even got a monkey named Fipps that he brought with him on his rounds, whose funny faces and antics brought out reactions from even the most difficult patients. Jyoti Asundi (21:16) What a nice little tool, a monkey for- as an icebreaker. Aarati Asundi (21:21) Yeah. I wonder if they do the same thing with dogs. I know they have therapy dogs and therapy cats you know today. Jyoti Asundi (21:26) Yeah, that's right. We see that now with our family dog. I always mention this, how I have been going for walks here in the town that we live in for years and years without knowing a single soul. But now we can't go fifty feet without somebody stopping to admire the dog and have a conversation. So it's become more of an amble and less of a walk. Aarati Asundi (21:49) Yeah. Everyone seems to know. "There goes Kyro!" and we're like, my gosh. Yes. Jyoti Asundi (21:53) That's right. There we go. Another pit stop where we chat and get to know our neighbors. Aarati Asundi (22:00) Yes. Yeah. So he figured this out. The animals have a way of, getting reactions from people and opening them up. So Jyoti Asundi (22:06) Yes he's our icebreaker. Aarati Asundi (22:09) Yes. But the question that continued to intrigue Hermann the most was the connection between the mind and sensations in the body. So he had been reading and cataloguing examples of this for a while now. For example, he remembered when he was a kid, a group of boys grabbed another boy, and as a prank, they told him they were going to pull out his tooth. They grabbed really hard onto his tooth, and then one of them snuck behind him and pinched his leg really hard. They didn't actually pull his tooth, but afterwards the boy said that he couldn't really pinpoint the difference in pain between the leg pinch and the anticipated pain from getting the tooth pulled. Jyoti Asundi (22:54) Ah yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (22:56) So even though the boy had never had a tooth pulled before, he could imagine that it would be painful and he had an idea of how sharp and sudden that pain would be. Jyoti Asundi (23:08) Yes. Aarati Asundi (23:08) And so then when he did experience a sharp and sudden pain, even though it was on the wrong place in his body... Jyoti Asundi (23:15) Correct. Aarati Asundi (23:15) ...his brain kind of just got confused. Jyoti Asundi (23:18) Absolutely. Yeah, I see this. It's like the sensory organs mixing signals. Aarati Asundi (23:25) So what Hermann realized is that people can imagine what it might be like to experience something even if they've never actually felt it before. Another example might be that you could imagine what it would be like to fly because you felt the wind in your face, or maybe you've jumped on like a trampoline before. And so you can kind of put these sensations together and you could have this, imagination of the sensation of flying. Jyoti Asundi (23:52) Correct. This is basic human intelligence at work because you don't have to experience everything and endure every single mistake by making every mistake yourself. You can learn from something else. So extending the data. Okay, if I touched a hot stove so I can imagine how sticking my hand into a flame would be. I'm not going to do that, that kind of thing. Yes. Aarati Asundi (24:14) Yes. But that distinction of I've put my hand on a stove, it was hot, so I'm not gonna put my hand on a stove again, that's one thing. But the distinction of I can imagine that being in a burning building would be like how it felt to stick my hand on the stove, but all over. You know, that distinction of... Jyoti Asundi (24:38) and ten times worse. Aarati Asundi (24:38) ...being able to extrapolate it, yeah, Jyoti Asundi (24:40) I can extend that data. Correct. I can extrapolate the data, correct. Aarati Asundi (24:42) Yes, yes. And that's particularly what Hermann was interested in. The fact that we can extrapolate data from something that, we have felt before and imagine what it would be like to feel something that we haven't felt before. And so he called this relocalization, the idea that sensations could be detached from their original source and then felt somewhere else in a different context. Jyoti Asundi (25:09) Okay. Aarati Asundi (25:09) And it wasn't just similar physical feelings either. He was also interested, in how visual and auditory sensations could be relocalized. So for example, when he was a child, he had learned some violin. But many of the songs that he knew were played by muscle memory rather than him actually thinking about which notes to play. So in this case the physical sensation of pressing the strings on the violin and hearing the correct notes were linked. Jyoti Asundi (25:36) Yes. Aarati Asundi (25:36) At the clinic, he said, "We who live on Lake Constance have for a long time now localized any humming noise we hear in the air, expecting to see Zeppelin's airship come into view." Jyoti Asundi (25:50) Hey, look how nicely they tie to each other two different episodes that have we have done. That's cute. I like that. Aarati Asundi (25:57) Yeah. So in this case it was the auditory like hum that, gives that anticipation that people start looking in the sky, like, "Do you hear that?" Even if the hum is coming from, you know, a vacuum cleaner or something. Jyoti Asundi (26:09) Something else entirely. Jyoti Asundi (26:11) Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (26:11) There goes Mad Count Zeppelin! Aarati Asundi (26:13) Yes, yes. And one more that was important was if, for example, he was struggling to recreate a painting of a knight holding up a sword. If he just tried to imagine it from memory, he had a really hard time. But if he held up his arm in the same way as he remembered the knight in the painting doing, then the whole drawing came back to him much easier because now he had a visual representation of it. Jyoti Asundi (26:41) Yes, he could take that little point and then extrapolate further from it. Yes, I get it. Aarati Asundi (26:46) Yes. And he realized that this is what many of his patients were experiencing when they were hallucinating. Jyoti Asundi (26:54) Oh I see. Aarati Asundi (26:54) So they would make seemingly strange body movements or see and hear things that others couldn't. But really what was happening was they were blending what they were imagining with reality. Jyoti Asundi (27:06) Yeah, they have been overstimulated. They have taken some small kernel of truth and now blown it up in their mind and now they are not able to separate the reality from the imagined scenarios. Aarati Asundi (27:19) Yeah, So those physical, auditory, and visual sensations that they were feeling were being relocalized into something that they thought was actually happening, that was real. Jyoti Asundi (27:29) Yes. Aarati Asundi (27:30) Meanwhile, he's also reading the work of, these other great psychologists that we were mentioning. We already mentioned Carl Jung's word association test. But another key person that he was reading about was Robert Vischer, who was a philosopher who wrote about how humans had the capacity to take something that is objectively lifeless and feel emotions from it and can empathize with the artist or the subject. So if you think about it, a work of art is really just lines of paint on a canvas. Jyoti Asundi (28:03) Yes, correct. Aarati Asundi (28:03) But even if it forms something abstract, people can feel sensations of calmness or anxiety or excitement by looking at the colors and the lines as they've been drawn. Jyoti Asundi (28:15) That is a very good point. You can look at the painting of a deep, calm forest or a beautiful ocean and have those feelings come back. And actually what you're doing is you're kind of imagining how you would be in that peaceful setting and then your own mind goes into peace. But at the absolute technical molecular level, that is just paint blobs. Aarati Asundi (28:42) Yes. And I thought that was interesting too, because it makes sense if you're looking at a painting of a, you know, sad child or something, you may also feel sad in empathy. But I thought it was interesting that, they made the point that even abstract art can give you the same sensations of being sad or being calm if they use certain colors and certain shapes. You may also look at it and feel, you know, calm or sad. Or excited and happy if the colors are bright and you know the shapes are exciting. And it's the same with music. Objectively, music is just tones or sounds that are strung together one after the other, but we feel emotions when we listen to it. Jyoti Asundi (29:22) Yes, correct. Aarati Asundi (29:24) And in psychology it was very well known that art therapy and music therapy could have a profound healing effect or calming effect on patients. Jyoti Asundi (29:32) I have found that trick actually about how music is evocative of feelings and in fact most of the time when I watch a horror scene I shut off the sound and it becomes much more bearable. It's the music that is causing the problem. Aarati Asundi (29:48) Oh yeah. Jyoti Asundi (29:48) It is not the scene at all actually. Aarati Asundi (29:50) Have you seen people have taken it one step further on like social media on YouTube and, TikTok and all this where they take a horror scene but then they superimpose like really happy, funny music on top of it and then the whole scene just becomes hilarious. Jyoti Asundi (30:06) A comedy, a comedy. Wow Aarati Asundi (30:08) Yeah, because the scary guy's like stalking you down the hallway, but they're walking to like this, you know, clown music or something. Jyoti Asundi (30:16) Oh nice, nice. Aarati Asundi (30:16) You know, it's like their shoes are squeaking down the hallway. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (30:19) Yes, yes, yes. It's the music playing with your mind, it and you your own imagination at play actually. You're imputing emotions to this music and now you're terrified, horrified, sad, happy, etcetera. Aarati Asundi (30:34) Yeah. And so psychologists had already figured this out by this time and they were using, you know, like let's play the patients calm, happy music to keep them hopefully in a state of calmness and happiness. Jyoti Asundi (30:49) Yes. Aarati Asundi (30:50) But the other influential figure that Hermann was also studying, we also covered on this podcast, Alfred Binet, who developed the IQ test. Jyoti Asundi (31:00) That's right! Aarati Asundi (31:01) So Alfred Binet had experimented with klexography, which was using inkblots to test how imaginative a child was. He thought that if a child could look at one inkblot and see many different figures, then they were more imaginative than a child who could only see one or two things. Jyoti Asundi (31:20) Okay. Aarati Asundi (31:21) So this didn't make it to the final IQ test but it was one of the things that he was, you know, kind of dabbling in. Jyoti Asundi (31:27) Got it. Aarati Asundi (31:28) So Hermann is reading all of this information, and he wanted to try to probe this idea further of how the mind perceives and processes information from the senses. Jyoti Asundi (31:39) Okay. Aarati Asundi (31:40) But the Munsterlingen Clinic wasn't too open to this idea of long-term psychoanalysis of patients. And so he set his sights once again on Russia. The rules had changed by this time, so he was able to take a state exam in order to practice psychology in Russia. He found a clinic in Kryukovo. Don't know if I'm saying that right, but...This clinic seemed very open to psychoanalysis and doctors trying a combination of therapies to help patients, everything from art to hypnosis to medical therapies, and so he could more easily experiment with his ideas there. Jyoti Asundi (32:18) Okay. Aarati Asundi (32:19) The 1910s, also coincided with a huge artistic and literary movement in Russia called Futurism. Jyoti Asundi (32:26) Okay. Aarati Asundi (32:27) In the world right now, it's a time of zeppelins and airplanes, cars, photography and moving pictures and cinema, all these like amazing futuristic things. It's like this technological boom is happening all around the world. Jyoti Asundi (32:43) That's right. Industrial revolution. Aarati Asundi (32:44) Yes. And so artists also started to think about what the world would look like in the future, and so they're trying to create art and poetry that really broke with traditional subjects and rules by creating more abstract works or things that were deliberately left up to the imagination or the viewer's interpretation. Jyoti Asundi (33:05) Okay. Aarati Asundi (33:05) And it was a subject that Hermann also studied a lot and even wrote papers on the psychology of futurism. But in spite of everything that Russia had going for it, Hermann soon found it too chaotic to work there. He, like I said, was a very introverted person and Russian society was very social. People were dropping in all day, all the time. And so he felt like he really had no time to actually write down his observations and study the notes that he took about his patients. Jyoti Asundi (33:35) Yes. The cultural norms are definitely different. This sounds more like how it was in India when I was growing up. I think India has also changed now, but people could drop by at any time. because there wasn't a telephone by which to tell you, I'd like to come visit you this afternoon. You just came and took a chance and, you know, most likely they were home because there was nowhere else to go. That kind of thing, yeah. I can see this being frustrating for an introvert who is on a mission to study something and then write down the notes to analyze them and compare them to previous an analysis, I can see how frustrating that would be. Aarati Asundi (34:13) Yes, so after barely a year in Russia he moved back to Switzerland in 1914, but this time he went to the Waldau clinic in Bolingen. Jyoti Asundi (34:23) He came at a very good time, right? Because that's when the World War started and then... Aarati Asundi (34:29) Right. Jyoti Asundi (34:29) ...Europe and Russia were on the opposite sides of that war. Aarati Asundi (34:34) Yeah, so actually Olga stayed in Russia a little bit longer, partly because of this, because World War One started immediately after Hermann moved back to Switzerland and partly because she was homesick for Russia. So she ended up staying there for like ten months. When she finally joined him, then they moved to Harisau, Switzerland, where Hermann worked at the Krombach Psychiatric Hospital. Jyoti Asundi (35:00) Okay. Aarati Asundi (35:01) Here is where they finally settled down for good, and they had two children, Elisabeth and Ulrich. And Hermann was an excellent father who doted on his children, giving them books and drawings and toys and anything really that he thought that they would enjoy. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Aarati Asundi (35:22) Hi everyone, Aarati here. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If so, and you wish someone would tell your science story, I founded a science communications company called Sykom, that's S-Y-K-O-M, that can help. Sykom blends creativity with scientific accuracy to create all types of science, communications, content, including explainer videos, slide presentations, science, writing, and more. We work with academic researchers, tech companies, nonprofits, or really any scientists. To help simplify your science, check us out at sykommer.com. That's S-Y-K-O-M-M-E-R.com. Back to the story. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Aarati Asundi (36:11) Now in Switzerland, Hermann started seriously combining the ideas he had picked up about art, emotion, and psychology and started using them to treat patients. He tried to get his patients to draw so that he could study their drawings, which had worked really well for some Russian psychologists, but for some reason he found when he gave his Swiss patients a pencil and paper, they liked to talk more about what they would draw rather than actually draw it. So interesting cultural difference there. Jyoti Asundi (36:42) Yes. Aarati Asundi (36:43) But then around this time he met a medical student who was writing his dissertation on whether mentally ill patients interpret inkblots differently than healthy people. Although the student didn't find any meaningful differences, Hermann saw more potential to this project because of how much he knew about art and the emotions that it can evoke. Jyoti Asundi (37:04) Yes. Aarati Asundi (37:05) And he looked at the inkblots that the student had been using and hevfound them to be very simple and frankly boring. And he was likevthese inkblots wouldn't really elicit emotion from anyone. Jyoti Asundi (37:18) Okay. Aarati Asundi (37:19) And so therefore you can't really judge a person's psychology if you tell them to look at a boring thing, everyone's gonna find it boring. Jyoti Asundi (37:26) That's right. Yeah, a round blob of ink, you know, everybody's going to call it something very simple, yeah. Aarati Asundi (37:32) Yeah. You're probably gonna call around thing a ball or whatever, you know, so you're not gonna get much from it. So Hermann set about making better, more provocative ink blots. And this is where we get into kind of the artistry of it. He was very deliberate about it. I had always kind of thought that, you know, they were just made by dripping some ink on the side of a paper and then folding the paper in half. Jyoti Asundi (38:01) Yes, they do look like that. Aarati Asundi (38:03) They do look like that. But there is a lot more to it than that. I didn't know this before, but there are only ten official Rorschach ink blot cards. And each one was very specially designed. Jyoti Asundi (38:16) I see. Aarati Asundi (38:17) Hermann made sure that there were no numbers or letters in any of the designs. Each shape is ambiguous, but at the same time very deliberate to make the person looking at them feel like there is some intention behind the picture. Jyoti Asundi (38:32) Okay. Aarati Asundi (38:33) Some of the inkblots include colors like red or blue to evoke emotion, while others are just pure black and white. As for why each inkblot is symmetrical, Hermann said, "Symmetry makes the form more pleasing to the eye and thus makes the subject more willing to perform the task. The image is equally suitable for right-handed or left-handed subjects. It also encourages the seeing of whole scenes". Jyoti Asundi (38:59) Okay, interesting take. Aarati Asundi (39:02) Yes. And then he didn't touch on this, but the author of the biography that I read, Damien Searls, noted that it was also interesting that all the ink blots are symmetrical vertically and not horizontally or diagonally. And this also may have been intentional as vertical symmetry is more often seen in biology. So it would be more likely for the patient to see faces or the human body or animals or plants even because these are all vertically symmetrical. Jyoti Asundi (39:34) Yes, yes, yes. Ha, cool, Aarati Asundi (39:36) And then also because of how he designed them, the patients would be more likely to see this whole thing as a game and not a test, and so they would be more willing to do the thing. Jyoti Asundi (39:45) A little more relaxed, a little more open, the true feelings come out, the true emotions have space to be expressed. Aarati Asundi (39:52) Yes. But his biggest breakthrough was to stop using the inkblots as a test of the imagination, like Binet was doing. So for example, if he showed the same image to two schizophrenic patients and asked what might this be, one might spin a very elaborate fairy tale about a hidden treasure in the woods being guarded by mythical bear like creatures, while the second patient would just say that he saw some bears standing in a circle. And in this case, simply saying that one patient is more imaginative than the other isn't really helpful. Instead, Hermann said it was important to understand how they were interpreting and processing the visual information. It was likely that for some reason the second person who just saw bears in a circle had interpreted the shape of the bear first and then their brain got stuck on that for some reason, and then they couldn't see past that. Jyoti Asundi (40:49) Yes, okay. Aarati Asundi (40:50) Hermann called this confabulation. So even if you pushed them to interpret the shapes around the bear, all they could really come up with was it's a circle. Whereas the other person could come up with, like it's it the woods, and there's a treasure box there, and there's a cave, and you know, is able to look at all the other shapes surrounding the bear. Jyoti Asundi (41:10) Just out of curiosity, did he also show those same blots to a normal person and find a difference between... Aarati Asundi (40:17) Yes, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Jyoti Asundi (41:18) Oh okay, okay, I'm jumping ahead, sorry about that. Okay. Aarati Asundi (41:21) Yeah, no worries. And then sometimes if you showed the patient a different ink blot altogether, their brain was still stuck on it's a bear. Jyoti Asundi (41:30) So you come up with a completely different one. It looks more like a butterfly now, but it doesn't matter. A bear is a bear is a bear. Okay. All right. Aarati Asundi (41:36) Yep. Yes, so he's still stuck on it's a bear. Yeah. Jyoti Asundi (41:40) Okay. Got it. Aarati Asundi (41:41) Whereas the first person was much more creative and coherent in their answer, and so they had a greater capacity for understanding and interpreting visual information and expressing how they felt about it. So now you imagine he's showing these ink blots to all these people. They're giving various answers. Everything from it's a bear, it's a butterfly, it's you know, a ball, it's a kid crying, you know, like how are you going to make sense of all of these answers that he's receiving? Jyoti Asundi (42:09) Yes. And is the person with more imagination and the ability to flow from one thought to another and now it's no longer a bear and now it's a forest and now it's a butterfly. Is that mind actually more diseased because it's just flowing away without any control? Versus the other one that's kind of stuck in place and cannot move past one thought. Aarati Asundi (42:34) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (41:35) Which one is the worse problem and which one is more difficult to treat. That's also another thought. Okay. Aarati Asundi (42:42) Yes. And so Hermann had to come up with some quantitative measure. Jyoti Asundi (42:46) Yes. Aarati Asundi (42:47) So there were several key things he paid attention to. First was that some patients refused to give an answer for some of the cards. Whereas healthy people always gave some response. So the first question was, did the patient reject cards and how many? Jyoti Asundi (43:05) Okay. Aarati Asundi (43:06) Second, he noted whether a patient was able to process and interpret small details, or whether they got stuck on larger parts of the image. So for example, if someone said they saw the shape of a woman and he asked them, well, what about this small bit here that's coming out of the woman? Could the patient come up with an interpretation like she's throwing a ball, for example? Jyoti Asundi (43:27) Okay, uh-huh uh-huh. Aarati Asundi (43:29) Or would they just be like, I don't know, it's a woman, yeah. Jyoti Asundi (43:32) Yeah, She's weird. Yeah. Okay. Aarati Asundi (43:35) Third was how much importance did the patient give to shape or form of the blot, the color, and if they described any movement. So for example, the patient could be looking at a blue shape, and the patient might say simply, it's two bears. So that's just looking at the form or the shape of the blot. Jyoti Asundi (43:56) Okay. Aarati Asundi (43:56) Or they might say it's two blue bears. So now they've given you form and color. Or they might say it's two blue bears that are dancing. So they've added some movement to the image. Jyoti Asundi (44:08) Yes, yes. Aarati Asundi (44:10) It was very uncommon for someone to just say it's blue. So just give the color. And so if that response came, that was very clearly noted as something abnormal. Jyoti Asundi (44:21) Completely different. Okay. Aarati Asundi (44:22) Yes, yes. Jyoti Asundi (44:23) So much to think about from this one piece of inkblot. Okay. Aarati Asundi (44:28) And finally he paid attention to whether what the patient described actually fit the shape and whether that was a popular response to give. Jyoti Asundi (44:37) I see, I see. Aarati Asundi (44:38) So for example, if someone said that a large triangular shape was an apple, that would probably be an abnormal interpretation of that shape. Jyoti Asundi (44:48) Yes, correct. Aarati Asundi (44:48) But if they interpreted it as a pyramid or a mountain, that would be more understandable and probably a more popular interpretation. More people would likely say that. Jyoti Asundi (44:58) That's right. They're associating it with real life shapes, yeah. And not just randomly saying something. Aarati Asundi (45:04) But I also thought it was interesting that he made note of how often that answer came up too. If a lot of people gave the answer mountain, he's like, "Okay, that tracks with what most people are saying." But even if they said pyramid, it's like, that's a bit of an unusual response. So it's not as popular a response, but it does track with the shape. So he's got these layers that he's looking at. Jyoti Asundi (45:29) Yes, I would probably say pizza because I have food on my brain all the time. Aarati Asundi (45:33) But it tracks with the shape. So even if it might not be a popular response, you're not completely crazy. Jyoti Asundi (45:41) I'm not completely crazy, just food crazy. Aarati Asundi (45:43) Yes. So to that point, there are no right answers, but there are more normalized ones. Jyoti Asundi (45:51) Yes. Yes. Okay. Aarati Asundi (45:53) And through looking at it this way, this quantitative way, he started to notice patterns. Although initially it was a small sample size, he found that schizophrenic patients were more likely to refuse to answer more cards, and they were more likely to give strange and abnormal interpretations of shapes, whereas manic patients were less likely to pay attention to color or movement and more likely to pay attention to small details. And so of course he was also doing control groups, so he was showing the ink blots to healthy people. And in some cases, he even saw that a seemingly healthy person gave responses that corresponded strongly with the schizophrenics response. And then when he dug into that person's history, he found that there was a family history of schizophrenia. Or that the person had only just recently started to show some symptoms. Jyoti Asundi (46:47) Oh wow, so very early on he can catch the beginnings of schizophrenia using these blots. Aarati Asundi (46:54) Yes. Jyoti Asundi (46:54) That is a very powerful tool. Aarati Asundi (46:56) Yes, so it's almost becoming like a diagnostic at this point. Jyoti Asundi (47:00) Yeah. Already it is powerful that you're able to separate manic from schizophrenic and then the next level of early diagnosis using this as a diagnostic tool. That is very powerful. I didn't realise they these blots were that powerful. I just looked at them as a parlor game up to now I was just looking at them as a parlor game. Aarati Asundi (47:21) So we're gonna get into that a little bit more too, but it did kind of become that, unfortunately. But yeah, it's actually very powerful. he also found that if you retested a patient, although their interpretation of the image might drastically change, the patterns as to whether they refused to answer or how much they paid attention to shape, color, and movement did not change. And so even if a schizophrenic patient gave, you know, the interpretation of bears dancing in the woods one time and then the next time they said like, it's witches surrounding a cauldron, and, you know, had a completely different interpretation of it, how much they paid attention to the color and the shape and, the small details... Jyoti Asundi (48:08) The other details. Aarati Asundi (48:09) Yeah, whether they paid attention to details or not, those things did not change. And so you could still tell that the patient was schizophrenic. Jyoti Asundi (48:17) Okay. Aarati Asundi (48:18) Despite these very exciting results, Hermann struggled for years to publish his results because he did not have a clear explanation as to why these patterns existed. Jyoti Asundi (48:28) Yes. Aarati Asundi (48:29) Also, he didn't have any money to publish. It was very expensive to print an image in those days, and he had 10 that he needed to include. Jyoti Asundi (48:39) That is good point. Aarati Asundi (48:41) Mm-hmm. But while he struggled with the publishers, he continued to improve his data and analysis. Jyoti Asundi (48:48) Yes. the larger the data set, the better the analysis, because now you are able to really see the patterns. Aarati Asundi (48:55) Yes. So he found more test subjects to study and he started to experiment with whether he could actually use the inkblots as a diagnostic tool because he saw the beginnings of that. Jyoti Asundi (49:06) Yeah. Aarati Asundi (49:10) So he conducted a totally blind study where he was given just a person's response to the inkblots and he tried to diagnose them based on that without knowing anything else about the person. He just got their written response. Jyoti Asundi (49:19) Yes. He created a blinded study where somebody else was interacting with the actual people and recording the responses and now he's just has the data piece so he doesn't know anything about them. Got it. Aarati Asundi (49:32) Yes, so and then he's trying to see if he can diagnose them. Jyoti Asundi (49:36) Yes. Aarati Asundi (49:37) He got an error rate of less than twenty five percent, but he claimed it would have been even lower if he had known the age and sex of the subject, which he had intentionally made sure he didn't know. Jyoti Asundi (49:47) I see. That is quite remarkable. Aarati Asundi (49:51) Quite powerful. These blind studies went a long way in convincing other psychologists that this was more than just a fun game to play with patients. Psychologists in other clinics started doing the test on their patients and sending the patient's answers to Hermann for interpretation. Hermann's accuracy at diagnosing patients that he had never met just by knowing their answers to the test was truly remarkable. And interestingly, Hermann showed that much like Alfred Binet found with intelligence, people could work on changing parts of their psychology that they weren't happy with. Jyoti Asundi (50:27) Nice! yes. Aarati Asundi (50:28) Not just mental patients, but also healthy people who maybe struggle to show emotion or tended to brood or fantasize a lot or struggle to finish tasks, these kinds of things that, you know, don't make you the mentally ill category, but they're parts of your psychology that you struggle... Jyoti Asundi (50:45) But you creates a daily struggle. Yes. Aarati Asundi (50:48) Yeah. Hermann could recognize signs of these kinds of behaviors based on the inkblot answers that he got, and he would draw up a treatment plan to help mitigate those behaviors. And then months later, when he tested the person again, he could see changes not only in how the person interpreted the inkblots, but also the person felt that they truly had a better quality of life after going through the therapy that he had prescribed. Jyoti Asundi (51:15) That is such a beautiful contribution. Because mental health is so underrated, Now it is slowly- the mental challenges are coming into play and how a person's life can turn from despair to a very nice, lovely, productive life, that is only now being recognized slowly. This is beautiful that he has found such a powerful way to diagnose them, come up with a treatment plan and actually see that it's making a difference. Aarati Asundi (51:44) Yes. The other interesting point is that as Hermann and other psychologists started testing more and more people, they realized that people's psychology could change dramatically. For example, when they hit puberty, or if they entered the military, or were trained in some specific skill, like an artist or a marksman who were you trained to recognize small details, for example, their psychology would be different than the rest of the population. Jyoti Asundi (52:15) Yes. Aarati Asundi (52:16) Finally, in June 1921, Hermann's work was published in a full-on book called Psychodiagnostics. There were skeptics, of course, but overall psychologists across Europe saw what a remarkable tool the inkblots were. Importantly, Hermann said the inkblots were just one test that should be used in conjunction with many others when diagnosing a patient and not used in isolation. In March 1922 he wrote, "My method is still in its infancy. I am completely convinced that after enough experience with the main ink blot series, ways forward to other, more specialized inkblots will open up, which will necessarily allow for significantly more differentiated conclusions." Jyoti Asundi (53:02) Hmm, he's trying to fine-tune the whole process now. Aarati Asundi (53:06) Yes, he's like, We've got these ten. That's a good starting base. But as we continue to experiment with it, we can make more. Possibly once you diagnose a patient with schizophrenia, you can show them maybe a second set of ink blots that are specifically made for schizophrenic patients to understand even more about their condition. You know? Jyoti Asundi (53:28) The degree, yes. Aarati Asundi (53:28) So he has this like vision of how big this test can become. But that same month, Hermann started experiencing severe stomach pains. Initially, Olga told their friends it was nothing and Hermann was also reluctant to seek medical help, but eventually they did finally call a doctor. Hermann was diagnosed with appendicitis, but by the time they got Hermann to a hospital and the surgeon arrived, it was too late. Jyoti Asundi (53:57) No. Aarati Asundi (53:57) And Hermann died on April 2nd, 1922 from a ruptured appendix. Jyoti Asundi (54:02) Oh so early, right? Aarati Asundi (54:05) He was only 37 years old. Jyoti Asundi (54:08) No way. Oh my god, that is very tragic. Aarati Asundi (54:13) He knew he was going, too. In his last days Hermann said "In a way it is a beautiful thing to leave in the middle of life, but it is bitter. I have done my part, now let others do theirs." Jyoti Asundi (54:27) Oh wow. He recognized it as a middle of life. I don't know how to say it, but there are people who die young, but they know that and they feel that what their work is completed. I don't want to get completely derailed here, but there are some sages I'm thinking about who died very young. But they felt that the current body that they were in, the current situation of life they were in, they said was no longer enough to hold them. They said they needed something bigger, they needed to move on. They had this huge urge to move on so that's different, but when he says I'm in the middle of things still, it's very tragic actually. Aarati Asundi (55:08) Yes. It was very shocking to a lot of people, too. It was very sudden, very shocking. Jyoti Asundi (55:13) Yes. Aarati Asundi (55:14) And there was a bit of "Was it preventable?" Because if he had gone and gotten, you know, help sooner, if Olga, his wife, had prompted him and said, "Go take a look at it", and he himself had not been so reluctant to go seek medical treatment, maybe he would have... Jyoti Asundi (55:31) Yes. Was he being negligent a bit, yeah. Aarati Asundi (55:35) Yeah. I was reading in the book that there was some other incident with a patient and then the doctor had like yelled at him for trying to treat the patient medically when he should have just taken the patient to the doctor in the first place and the doctor had kind of yelled at him and so he didn't want to go see that doctor again. Something- something like that had happened. Jyoti Asundi (55:53) Oh something very minor like that. Aarati Asundi (55:55) Yeah, and then he was like reluctant to go see that doctor again after that doctor had yelled at him. Jyoti Asundi (56:01) See how the little things of life and end up becoming a really big problem. Aarati Asundi (56:06) Yes. After his death, his inkblots continued to rise in popularity. They made their way all around the world and became especially popular in America. At first, the inkblots stayed in the domain of psychology. They were used purely as a tool for science, and so only psychologists and their patients ever saw them. Jyoti Asundi (56:27) Okay. Aarati Asundi (56:28) But soon, without Hermann to hold the reins, the tests did start to leak out to the general public, and people started to misuse them. Employers started using them to test prospective candidates. Jyoti Asundi (56:40) That is horrible. That is truly horrible. Aarati Asundi (55:45) And I think that it's really dangerous because even if you said something like, "I see a skull," an employer who's not a psychologist might take that very negatively and be like, that's like a murder thing to say, like this guy's a murderer, I'm not gonna hire him. Whereas if you were a psychologist, you might be more trained to be like "Yes, okay, I see the skull. He's looking at the form of it, he's looking at the shape of it. And a skull is not inherently a red flag, you know? Jyoti Asundi (57:15) Correct. Aarati Asundi (57:15) Is that a logical conclusion to draw from the shape that you're seeing? Yeah, it could be. It could be a very logical thing. And so a psychologist would not necessarily raise any red flags from seeing a skull. Jyoti Asundi (57:28) Yeah, even to administer the test you need to have certain level of competence and you are obviously not. You do not have that competence. You did not train to be a psychiatrist. Aarati Asundi (57:38) Exactly. So you're just making up your own red flags based on whatever you think might be a red flag. Jyoti Asundi (57:44) That's right. That's terrible. Aarati Asundi (57:47) Anthropologists started trying to use it as a universal personality test by showing it to remote tribes and communities. Jyoti Asundi (57:54) I see. Aarati Asundi (57:55) And then soon people without any true knowledge of psychology started using it almost as a game or a fun personality test. Jyoti Asundi (58:00) Yes. Yes, yes. They're using Rorschach's ink blots as a parlor game to while away an evening. Aarati Asundi (58:09) Yeah. And I think that's where that comment that you said about how you didn't realize the Rorschach test was so deep. Like I didn't either. I didn't- I also thought like someone just spread ink on a page and was like, What do you see? And then if you say something like, "I see a skull or I see blood", then it's like, "Oh you're- you're a murderer" or something, like "That's terrible." And so I would want to temper my answers to like, no, "I see only happy things. I only see flowers and butterflies and like women dancing." That's all I see. You know, even if truly I did see... Jyoti Asundi (58:40) That's right. That's exactly. Yes, that's all I see because you know that's right. Because you're like I'm such a happy person. I see beautiful things in life only. Yeah. Aarati Asundi (58:51) Yeah. But now knowing what I know, if somebody did give me that test, I would be more likely to be honest and be like, "Yes, I do see a pool of blood. That's what I see." You know? Jyoti Asundi (59:02) That's right, that's right. Aarati Asundi (59:02) But I would know that that's not necessarily... Jyoti Asundi (59:06) Abnormal. Yeah. That is- that is the normal.... yeah. Aarati Asundi (59:07) Abnormal. It's like if it's red and it's circular, it yeah, it could be a normal thing to see. Jyoti Asundi (59:13) That's right. Aarati Asundi (59:14) But because you know, people started kind of just interpreting it any which way, the Rorschach test did begin to lose credibility in the eyes of real psychologists. Jyoti Asundi (59:25) Yeah. Because it's now too well known and people are now tempering their responses to suit the narrative that is required. Yeah. Aarati Asundi (59:33) Yes. But in 2013, a paper called "The Validity of Individual Rorschach Variables: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis of the Comprehensive System" looked at data from several previously published studies using the Rorschach test, and they found that certain scores from the test do in fact tell us something meaningful about how people perceive and process information. It's a bit of a mixed bag. There are psychologists who still aren't convinced, but I think it is an interesting tool when used in conjunction with other tried and validated psychological tests. Jyoti Asundi (1:00:09) Which is what Roschach said right all along. That use it in conjunction with others, don't use it as a standalone. Aarati Asundi (1:00:16) And I think if he had been alive, he would have been able to kind of hold the reins a lot more and kind of guide it and make sure that people were not misinterpreting it or Jyoti Asundi (1:00:28) Yeah, willy nilly using it anywhere. Uh-huh. Aarati Asundi (1:00:30) Yeah, misusing it. And one more point that I found interesting was that the results from the Rorschach test are admissible in court even though it's often used to point more to someone's cognitive functioning capacity rather than whether they might have committed a crime or not. Jyoti Asundi (1:00:48) Ah, there is some validity and some usefulness to this tool yet. Even in spite of all the corruptions, in spite of all the dilutions. Hm very cool. Aarati Asundi (1:00:59) Yes. And this podcast is more focused on the life of the person but a lot of this information I got from a book called "The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test and the Power of Seeing" by Damian Searles. And in that book he goes a lot more into the history of the inkblot test and what happened after Rorschach's death, how it came to America, how it got spread around, how people were using it, misusing it. So he goes into a lot more detail about what happened afterwards. So if you want to know more about Rorschach's life and what happened to the inkblot test afterwards, highly recommend reading that book. Jyoti Asundi (1:01:43) Okay. Nice. Aarati Asundi (1:01:44) But for now, that's all I have for you today. That's the life of Hermann Rorschach. Jyoti Asundi (1:01:49) That is a beautiful story. I am very disappointed that his life was cut short very prematurely in a way that could have been prevented. Aarati Asundi (1:02:00) Yeah, it's very difficult because I think also he was one of the only people who truly understood the power of his own test. Like, you know, psychologists were still sending answers to him for interpretation and were just astounded by how accurate he was, meaning that they couldn't do it themselves. Jyoti Asundi (1:02:23) That's right. Aarati Asundi (1:02:24) They didn't quite have the skill to interpret the answers the way that he did. Jyoti Asundi (1:02:29) Yes. Aarati Asundi (1:02:29) And they were saying things like, out of the answers Rorschach was able to discover things about their patients that they had only discovered after like two years of treating the patient and interacting with them. He was able to figure it out from their answers to the inkblot test. Jyoti Asundi (1:02:46) Remarkable. Aarati Asundi (1:02:46) And so it's like if he was the only one or one of the only ones who truly understood how to use his own test and he didn't have the time to properly teach it or make sure that people understood the power of it. It's like how much more powerful could this tool have been if... Jyoti Asundi (1:03:04) Yes. He was allowed to lay it all down properly. He himself was trying to understand why does it fall into these categories and he probably would have written some sort of a published something, to lay out the foundations of how Aarati Asundi (1:03:19) Yes. Some sort of guide or something, yeah, to help... Jyoti Asundi (1:03:21) Exactly. Aarati Asundi (1:03:22) Yeah, the fact that he couldn't do that is like such a missed opportunity. Jyoti Asundi (1:03:26) Yes. But maybe it is humanity protecting itself in a way because this is a very powerful tool. Aarati Asundi (1:03:33) Yeah, I think he really was onto something, combining the emotions and empathy that you feel with art and combining that with science to understand your soul. I feel like he was really on to something very, very deep and humanity just couldn't handle it. Jyoti Asundi (1:03:51) That's right. But this was a beautiful story and it gives me deep respect for those ink blots now, which I was not really looking at in a very serious way at all actually until now. Aarati Asundi (1:04:03) Yeah, I did think this would be more of a fun story and then I was like, "Whoa, this is actually a lot deeper than I thought it was going to be." Jyoti Asundi (1:04:09) Yeah. I remember as a young girl I used to take a piece of paper and we had those old fashioned pens where we literally filled the body of the pen with ink from a bottle. And we used to carefully when the teacher did not turn up that day, or the substitute teacher was very slack and not really interested in the class, we used to tear little pieces of our notebook and open the pen that we had, drip some ink, and then we would try to get different shapes, like, if I push the ink out like this, it'll become a heart. And if I push it like this, it'll become a tree. We used to try all sorts of things Aarati Asundi (1:04:48) Yeah. And I think that even also just speaks to how powerful of a tool it was. Because if you're doing this as a child and you're fascinated with it like there is something that it speaks to the soul somehow, you know, even if it's like in just a fun way or whatever, you know. Jyoti Asundi (1:05:01) Absolutely. Yes. It's a connection. Yes. Aarati Asundi (1:05:04) Yeah, there's some connection there that makes you interested in it, makes you interested in looking at it. Jyoti Asundi (1:05:08) That's right. Wow. Really cool. I appreciate all your stories actually, but one of the best ones. Thank you. Aarati Asundi (1:05:18) Yes, this was a fun one. Jyoti Asundi (1:05:19) Yes. Aarati Asundi (1:05:21) Thanks for listening. If you have a suggestion for a story we should cover or thoughts you want to share about an episode, reach out to us at smarteapodcast.com. You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Blue Sky @smartteapodcast, and listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave us a rating or comment. It helps us grow. New episodes are released every other Wednesday. See you next time!