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The Hashish-Rausch Explained by the Rorschach Test [1]

By Dr. Fritz Fränkel (Paris, 1935.)

Translated from the French by Helene Renault, (1998)

In works published recently in this journal, Marcel Monnier has clearly and vigorously drawn attention to the most significant aspects of the Rorschach method. He has not specified alternative interpretations of the test, however, which can assign terms to such morbid or semi-morbid states as rausch.

We would like to fill this gap by outlining some of the results to which we have been led through personal research.

The inkblot interpretation test has been continuously developed ever since Rorschach's publications. Let us recall that the author of this method first used it to demarcate illnesses characterized by psychic deviations, i.e. the different psychoses, the different types of schizophrenia, manic-depressive madness, and the different organic psychoses. Rorschach has determined the specific particularities for each of these various kinds of mental illness. Melancholy, for example, is characterized by a lack of kinesthetic interpretations and interpretations inspired by color, i.e. of a complete coaptation. It provides a considerable percentage of interpretations of the same content and few original interpretations: the mode of perception is signified essentially by normal details, to which some minor details are added.

In previous works, we ourselves have been able to show how Rorschach's method is applicable to the establishment of certain specific differences between several illnesses. Furthermore, we have enhanced this test's usefulness for certain psychiatric experiments. This capacity is increased by the fact that the examined subject himself cannot distinguish what is or is not important in his reactions. In a doubtful case, we have therefore been able to produce evidence of simulated dementia through the Rorschach test. In another case, the remnants of an epileptic affection have been demonstrated.

Moreover, we have attempted to demonstrate a new and particularly important application of this test, the results of which research are soon to appear in the Schweizer Archiv für Neurologie und Psychiatrie. This research is based on the different critical attitudes adopted by the subjects throughout the experiment; critical attitudes towards themselves as well as towards the inkblot presented to them, or towards the interpretation itself.

In the course of this research, we have found that the objective criticism, which covers not only the blot but also the meaning the subject gave it, belongs preferably to sensible, realistic types, non-imaginative or even devoid of fancy. The criticism aimed against the subject himself, however, regularly turned out to be the sign of an outstanding intellectual level. Moreover, in many cases it constitutes the indication of a neurotic constitution or mental instability.

A category of later experiments allowed us to specify the inkblot test data in abnormal conditions provoked by drugs. Our attention has mainly been focused on the differences between the same subjects' normal and hashish-influenced behavior. We believe that this research contributes to the understanding of rausch as a psychopathological phenomenon, and we have drawn some diagnostic applications from it.

Here we shall merely indicate two conclusions to which we have been led. It is known that the hashish-rausch has in common with other intoxication the ability to enlarge the field of affective reactions. It is this impression, well-known by all observers, for which the inkblot test allows analysis in a more precise manner. The analysis first shows the peculiar direction of the emotional variations. Whereas an observation of the intoxicated subject without method does not allow for the indication of either the meaning or direction of these changes, this test reveals them through the content of the interpretations. In certain cases, these interpretations can overtly derive from sexual emotionalism; others reveal a preponderant concern about the maternal instinct. On the other hand, this analysis has shown us the tight bonds existing between a certain quality of affectivity and certain stereotyped interpretations. If, by exception, the stereotyped interpretations turn out to be independent from symbolic representations, we can suppose that we are in the presence of subjects who inwardly suffer from a lack of objects to which to direct their affectivity.

This test has eliminated another specific phenomenon in rausch-states with particular clarity. It is known that subjects under the influence of hashish attribute an abnormally important significance to details, no matter how they interpret the images. The detail tends to burst its frame with a tendency towards emancipation. It is therefore no longer a detail.

In experiments where hashish is used, this phenomenon is disclosed by the relatively limited percentage of comprehensive interpretations. On the other hand, the detail changes in character. It is no longer isolated or limited to stimulating affectivity. It tends toward epic development. Sometimes a real dramatization of the interpreted detail occurs. This dramatization attempts to mingle or identify the detail with personal life, either recent or belonging to childhood. In this way, the detail acts as a starting point for a global conception, which frees itself, more or less, from the general image.

These indications will suffice to indicate the multiple applications of the Rorschach test. As for the test's potential utility in explaining rausch-states and abnormal states in general, we intend to come back to it in further studies.

Footnote:

[1] "Explication de l'ivresse de haschisch par le test de Rorschach" par le docteur Fraenkel (de Paris) in Hygiene Mentale: Journal de Psychiatrie Appliquée, Trentième année 1935, pp. 66-68.

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