Assessment of substance abusers on the MCMI-III and the Rorschach

We examined 60 substance abusers (SA) on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III; Millon, 1994) and on eight Rorschach variables from the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003). On the MCMI-III, SA scored above the cutoff for clinical significance (M > or = BR 70) on Drug Dependence (94.77), Antisocial (82.95), Depressive (74.33), Self-Defeating (71.48), and Alcohol Dependence (70.70). On seven of the CS variables (M+,o,u, XA%, X-%, WSum6Lv2%, M-%, SumT%, and Pure H%) the scores of the SAs suggested significant more psychopathology compared to the scores of 60 university students, whereas the SA's scores on six of these variables (M+,o,u, XA%, X-%, WSum6Lv2%, SumT%, and Pure H%) suggested significantly less psychopathology compared to the scores of 36 schizophrenics. The effect sizes for the significant differences were in the small, medium and large range (d= 0.31 to d= 1.87).     

Rorschach administration: a comparison of the effect of two instructions given to an inpatient sample of drug addicts

The effect of administering the Rorschach Inkblot Method under two instructional sets was compared on three classes of outcome variables: the frequency with which subjects asked questions about the test; the frequency of brief protocols (fewer than 14 responses); and 17 traditional Rorschach structural summary scores. Sixty subjects, obtained from three inpatient psychiatric clinics treating drug addicts, randomly received either the short pre‐testing instruction “What might this be?” originally developed by Herman Rorschach and recommended in the Comprehensive System, or a longer and more elaborated instruction, which for many years has been the standard instruction in Norway. Compared with the Norwegian instruction, the short instruction produced significantly more questions to the examiner about the test. For the other outcome measures no differences were observed.