| In psychoanalytic theory, growing emphasis on the importance of internal representation in psychological functioning has resulted in the development and refinement of projective measures intended to assess and articulate their nature. While similarly emphasized as important instruments in the assessment of human representation, the Rorschach and the TAT have infrequently been compared in this capacity, raising questions concerning their distinct and overlapping qualities in this area. Despite its prominent empirical status, the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 1974) for the Rorschach, is virtually absent in the comparative literature of object relational assessment. The present study was an attempt to identify a set of critical object representational CS variables and explore the relationship between the Rorschach and the TAT in this domain, utilizing the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scales (SCORS; Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1985) for the TAT as an established object relational criterion measure. Archival data, consisting of TAT and Rorschach protocols from 60 adults subjects (40 female and 20 male) recruited from outpatient and volunteer contexts, were utilized in a correlational comparison of scales from the SCORS and identified relational variables from the CS. All hypothesized relationships were not confirmed and a contradictory finding demonstrated a significant negative relationship between affective representations (AT) from the SCORS and relational receptiveness (T) from the CS. The implications of these findings in terms of the unsupported predicted relationships, counterintuitive results, and the methodological limitations of this study are discussed. |
