Bruno Klopfer: A Rorschach Pioneer

Bruno Klopfer is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Rorschach Inkblot Test. His efforts in developing and popularizing projective techniques were to have a profound impact on the development of psychological personality testing. In fact, prior to the introduction of Exner's comprehensive Rorschach scoring system, the Klopfer scoring system was the most popular among practicing clinicians (Exner & Exner, 1972, p. 13). Professionals in clinical psychology and psychiatry are certainly very indebted to Bruno Klopfer.     

Bruno Klopfer: a Rorschach pioneer

Bruno Klopfer is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Rorschach Inkblot Test. His efforts in developing and popularizing projective techniques were to have a profound impact on the development of psychological personality testing. In fact, prior to the introduction of Exner's comprehensive Rorschach scoring system, the Klopfer scoring system was the most popular among practicing clinicians (Exner & Exner, 1972, p. 13). Professionals in clinical psychology and psychiatry are certainly very indebted to Bruno Klopfer.     

2010 Bruno Klopfer Distinguished Contribution Award. Some considerations for enhancing psychological assessment

The field of psychological assessment appears to be bogged down in recent decades on refining existing measures and techniques to the detriment of real change. This article attempts to highlight some of the changes that need to take place in psychological assessment in the next few decades if real progress is to be achieved: (a) developing guidelines for psychological tests and measures; (b) establishing explicit criteria for training; (c) establishing guidelines for competencies; (d) recognizing the impact of marketing; (e) embracing electronic technology; and (f) implementing computer adaptive testing.     

A Rorschach Journey With Bruno Klopfer: Clinical Application and Teaching

Much of personality is interpersonal, and what is interpersonal can be elegantly organized through the crossing of 2 fundamental dimensions of personality: agency and communion. The interpersonal circumplex has enriched substantially what is known about personality and in particular personality disorder, emphasizing to clinicians the importance of considering maladaptive interpersonal functioning when conducting clinical assessments. The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on 5 articles concerning the interpersonal perspective on personality assessment. The contributions of these 5 studies are also understood relative to the proposed revisions to the American Psychiatric Association's personality disorder nomenclature, as the proposed revisions will be cutting out half of the interpersonal circumplex from further recognition.     

A Rorschach journey with Bruno Klopfer: clinical application and teaching

This article is a draft of a speech given as the recipient of the 2008 Bruno Klopfer Memorial award. I review some important details of the life of Bruno Klopfer, his contributions to the scoring and interpretation of the Rorschach (Exner, 2003), and his emphasis on the use of phenomenology in the process. I then focused on Klopfer's flexible scoring method and his use of Testing of the Limits techniques on the Rorschach, emphasizing their application to therapeutic and collaborative assessment. I illustrate my own application of Testing of the Limits using case vignettes. Finally, I present selected parts of two 1959 radio interviews of Bruno Klopfer.     

Collaborative, individualized assessment

Collaborative, individualized assessment is an approach to psychological assessment in which the assessor and the client work together to develop productive understandings. Collaboration is a means of individualizing the assessment--its process, resulting suggestions, and written accounts. In this approach, life events are regarded as primary data. Test scores, categories, and related research are used as bridges into a particular life and as tools for then exploring that life. This article, an invited Master Lecture presented at the 1999 Society for Personality Assessment (SPA) meeting, presents examples of contextualizing, intervening, describing in life-world terms, and writing individualized reports with suggestions. Historical struggles to promote individualized assessment and current openness to its practices, especially within SPA, are mentioned. A hermeneutic approach to impression formation is described.     

Bruno Klopfer,A Measure of the Man and His Work: A Review of Developments in the Rorschach Technique: volumes I,II, and III

This article reviews Bruno Klopfer's life and his contributions to the Rorschach, especially as they are represented in his three volume series: Developments in the Rorschach Technique, volumes I, II, and III. It emphasizes Klopfer's many contributions to Rorschach administration and interpretation, as well as his superior teaching and organizational abilities. Klopfer organized what eventually became The Society for Personality Assessment and began the journal that eventually became the Journal of Personality Assessment. His legacy is reflected in much of Exner's system of administration and scoring.     

Pragmatism, Naturalism, and Phenomenology

Pragmatism’s naturalism is inconsistent with the phenomenological tradition’s anti-naturalism. This poses a problem for the methodological consistency of phenomenological work in the pragmatist tradition. Solutions such as phenomenologizing naturalism or naturalizing phenomenology have been proposed, but they fail. As a consequence, pragmatists and other naturalists must answer the phenomenological tradition’s criticisms of naturalism.     

Meaning, Truth, and Phenomenology

This essay approaches Derrida through a consideration of his writings on Saussure and Husserl. Derrida is right to insist, following Saussure, on a relational theory of meaning: words do not have a one-to-one correspondence with their referents. But he is wrong to insist on a purely differential theory of meaning: words can refer to reality within the context of a body of knowledge. Similarly, Derrida is right to reject Husserl's idea of presence: no truths are simply given to consciousness. But he is wrong to reject the very idea of objective knowledge: we can defend a notion of objective knowledge couched in terms of a comparison of rival bodies of theories. The essay concludes by considering the implications of the preceding arguments for the enterprise of phenomenology.