The Utilization of The Rorschach Test in A Case-Controlled Study

Abstract

The Rorschach test was administered to 58 children of normal intelligence aged 7-14 years with a history of common migraine of at least 12 months and to a group of controls matched for age, sex, and IQ. The Rorschach test was scored blindly. The migraine group was characterized by marked intellectual inhibition with poor school performance and low response rates; inhibition of psychomotor activity and aggressiveness, shown by content analysis and by the presence of kinesthetic shock; inhibition of affect (ratio M/sum C); ineffective use of mechanisms of defence against anxiety (F-); prevalence of phobic features and massive use of repression, indicated by the high rejection rate and shock at red colour. The differences from the controls were significant at the 0.01 level with regard to all items in the preadolescent age group and with regard to all items except kinesthetic shock in the migraine group as a whole. There was thus a definite difference between the migraine group and the controls, a difference that might depend on impairment of ego function and on recurrent experience of pain.

Recurrent Headache, Coping, and Quality of Life in Children: A Review

“… 68,101 Intellectual inhibition, inhibition of psychomotor activity and aggressiveness, inhibition of affect, ineffective use of defense against anxiety, prevalence of phobic features, and massive use of repression were found in children with migraine when compared with matched controls, using the Rorschach test of personality and temperament. 102 …”

Self-concept evaluation and migraine without aura in childhood

“…Moreover, a few years later, Koch and Melchior49 found signs of nervousness, mental instability, and immaturity compared with healthy controls, in children affected by migraine, suggesting “a decreased resistance to psychological stress and conflict situations, rather than overt psychological disorder, or endogenous disease.” Maratos and Wilkinson,50 more than a decade later, found higher rates of anxiety and depression associated with “disturbed parental relationships” in children with migraine; an emotional upset was the most frequently reported headache trigger in this study. Subsequently, Guidetti et al51 identified the presence of feelings of exclusion from the family group and repressed hostility toward important figures, in children with migraine, while Lanzi et al52,53 observed a neurotic, borderline personality organization or “white relation” in juvenile migraine- and chronic tension-type-headache sufferers. Cahill and Cannon,54 in a population-based study, pinpointed that “migraine should be a headache subtype of particular interest for psychiatrists” given the significant association between stress, personality traits, psychiatric disorders, and migraine.…”

Rorschach Evaluation of Personality and Emotional Characteristics in Adolescents With Migraine Versus Epilepsy and Controls

“…The application of the Rorschach test administered and scored according to the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) guidelines aimed to describe the deep personality functioning and to identify the presence of any specific dysfunctional element in the sample of patients ( 34 ). Some previous studies on adolescent migraine have used the Rorschach method, according to the unpublished traditional administration and scoring techniques ( 35 , 36 ). Such researches provided a wealth of interesting findings on the personality profile of children and adolescents with migraine, but appeared to be also partially contradictory due to the non-standardization of the methods and to the bias in the mean ages of the groups compared.…”