Validity of Space Responses

Abstract

Abstract. Divorcing couples who require the intervention of the court system to resolve their child custody disputes usually exhibit intense anger and experience strong resentment. The Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM) is one of the most commonly used tests in child custody evaluations, in which one crucial issue is affectivity and its regulation, and, specifically, negative emotions such as anger and resentment. White Space (S) is one of the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS) variables usually taken into account to assess anger and resentment, but to date the construct validity of S responses for this purpose is far from established. Our study addresses this issue by exploring the association between S responses (coded on the basis of the following classifications: the CS, the Rorschach Performance Assessment System, and Rosso, Chiorri, and Denevi, 2015 ) and the motor, emotional, and cognitive components of aggression reported by clinicians in a sample of divorcing couples engaged in child custody litigation ( n = 85). Our findings support the hypothesis that Space fusion responses may be a marker of separation and emptiness anxiety, whereas no support is provided by this study for the hypothesis that Space reversal and Space integration responses are indicative of anger.

Construct Validity Of Rorschach Space Responses

“…In the current study, 135 (91.8%) participants reported at least one S response, and the S-integration responses were the most frequent, followed by S-fusion and S-reversal. This finding, consistent with the most recent studies [25,26], shows that S-fusion responses currently are not an uncommon finding in Rorschach protocols, as was hypothesized in earlier studies [21,24], and suggests that studies are needed to investigate the psychological processes underlying this type of Rorschach response.…”

“…The lack of correlations that was observed in both this study and in the previous ones [25,26], among S-integration, S-reversal, and S-fusion suggests that the responses were prompted by different psychological processes. As reported above, S-fusion responses very frequently were scored Form Quality minus, as the marked relationship between S-fusion and S minus showed.…”

“…On the contrary, recent studies [25,26] found that S-fusion response is not a rare response nowadays, and is observed in about half of the Rorschach protocols that are examined. It was seen that the three types of S responses were not correlated with each other, and that only S-fusion responses showed substantial association with self-reported feelings of anger [25] and with physical and verbal aggression, hostile thoughts, and feelings of anger as reported by clinicians [26]. These recent findings suggest that S-fusion, and not S-reversal or Sintegration are likely to be specifically associated with more dysfunctional emotional regulation of anger feelings…”

“…The recently developed Rorschach Performance Assessment System [9] differentiates primary and secondary S responses, labeling them SR (Space Reversal) and SI (Space Integration), respectively. However, unlike Rosso and colleagues [25,26], R-PAS guidelines do not consider the two kinds of S responses to be mutually exclusive and do not take S-fus responses into account. According to R-PAS, an S-fusion response might be coded SI, or SI+SR, or not be coded S at all.…”

“…A third type of Space response, i.e., the fusion of figure and ground, identified by some scholars in the 50s and 60s [23,24], was not investigated until recently [25,26]. This kind of Space response, recently named Space-fusion (S-fus) [25,26] Although Bohm [23] hypothesized that this type of response was a likely indicator of psychopathology, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical studies of its diagnostic significance were conducted until 2015. The absence of studies in this regard is probably due to the fact that Space-fusion response was considered very rare in the past [21].…”