The captivating untold story of Hermann Rorschach and his famous inkblot test NAMED ONE OF THE
BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • New York Post • Sunday Times (UK) • Irish Independent In 1917
working alone in a remote Swiss asylum psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach devised an experiment to
probe the human mind: a set of ten carefully designed inkblots. For years he had grappled with
the theories of Freud and Jung while also absorbing the aesthetic movements of the day from
Futurism to Dadaism. A visual artist himself Rorschach had come to believe that who we are is
less a matter of what we say as Freud thought than what we see. After Rorschach's early death
his test quickly made its way to America where it took on a life of its own. Co-opted by the
military after Pearl Harbor it was a fixture at the Nuremberg trials and in the jungles of
Vietnam. It became an advertising staple a cliché in Hollywood and journalism and an
inspiration to everyone from Andy Warhol to Jay Z. The test was also given to millions of
defendants job applicants parents in custody battles and people suffering from mental
illness or simply trying to understand themselves better. And it is still used today. In this
first-ever biography of Rorschach Damion Searls draws on unpublished letters and diaries and a
cache of previously unknown interviews with Rorschach's family friends and colleagues to tell
the unlikely story of the test's creation its controversial reinvention and its remarkable
endurance-and what it all reveals about the power of perception. Elegant and original The
Inkblots shines a light on the twentieth century's most visionary synthesis of art and science.
Praise for The Inkblots Impressively thorough . . . part biography of Herman Rorschach
psychoanalytic super sleuth and part chronicle of the test's afterlife in clinical practice
and the popular imagination . . . Searls is a nuanced and scholarly writer . . . genuinely
fascinating.-The New York Times Book Review A marvelous book about how one man and his
enigmatic test came to shape our collective imagination. The Rorschach test is a great subject
and The Inkblots is worthy of it: beguiling fascinating and full of new discoveries every
time you look. -David Grann author of The Lost City of Z
