The biography of the Germans

The childhood and youth of the future psychologist passed in the creative atmosphere. Father, Ulrich Rorshah, by profession was an artist-decorator, but, disappointed in this work, began to teach drawing at school. To create fairy tales for children on paper seemed to Rorshahu Sr. a much more pleasant activity than equipping interiors. He conveyed the subtle artistic taste and ability to draw by inheritance and his son.

At the gymnasium, Herman was not the first student in the classroom, but he comprehended all the subjects equally well and, as a result, passed the final exams for “excellent”. The last two years of study, the young man was in the Student Union. One of the backstage rules of this youth community was the tradition of assigning funny nicknames to all its participants. Herman was christened with a blot.

Why - one God knows. In any case, Rorshah with ink spots was still very far from future experiments ... Herman graduated from a gymnasium at 19 years old. By that time, his parents had already died, and the young man was tormented by the impossibility of getting at least some parting words into adulthood. First of all, his torment concerned the choice of a future profession.

On the one hand, natural sciences attracted, on the other hand, art, in particular painting. Being in indecision, Herman wrote a letter to the famous German philosopher and natural scientist Ernst Geckel with a request to give advice on choosing a specialty. And suddenly received an answer. Haeckel recommended the young man to do medicine, and several months later, Rorshah was listed as a student at the Faculty of Medicine of Zurich University.

For five years, Herman was immersed in science. He studied in Zurich, the pair, Berlin, Bern. However, not only medicine occupied his mind in these years. The second passion was a sudden and very strong love of Russian literature. Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky - thanks to them, German Rorshah almost perfectly and in a very short time learned the Russian language.

This passion, according to the memoirs of Rorshah himself, served as the beginning of the most radical changes in his life. In the year, he met the Russian girl Olga Stepelin, fell in love and soon offered her marriage. Turning, the newlyweds went to Olga's homeland. Rorshah was delighted. He traveled endlessly, visited many Russian cities and in some places even managed to establish private psychiatric practice.

For example, for about a year, he quite officially took patients in the Kryukovo sanatorium near Moscow, being registered there with a full -time psychiatrist.

Russia alone was not good for a young scientist: it did not give him the opportunity to engage in scientific activities. Therefore, despite the completely happy marriage and excellent fees, Herman decided to return to Switzerland. Several years passed, and in European scientific circles they first started talking about original ink spots, with the help of which a certain German Rorshah, a Swiss psychiatrist, a great adherent of the theories of Freud and Jung, tests ordinary schoolchildren to find out which fantasies distinguish successful students and lagging behind.

By the year of Rorshah, leaving no practice in the A Appencell Psychiatric Hospital that in the east of Switzerland, nor the post of vice-president of the Swiss psychoanalytic society, he collected all his studies according to the methodology of associative testing with the help of the pictures invented by him in the form of a blink of voluminous and serious work called Psychodiagnostics.

It is since then, by the way, this term has been “registered” in dictionaries in medicine and psychology. The Rorshah method was based on the decoding of associations obtained during the Clax test. The researcher insisted that at an unconscious level a huge layer of information about the personality of a person is hidden, which in the process of testing becomes available to a specialist.

Rorshah’s dream was to publish a brochure with branded blots, as well as an explanation for working with them and options for interpretations of the test. However, clearly a non -profit project did not arouse any interest among German publishers. For two years, with GO, Rorshah received more than a dozen refusals in the publication. In the end, he published a test for his own funds, which is why the book, to the great chagrin of Herman, was somewhat injured: firstly, the circulation was unreasonably small of the entire copies, and secondly, the author had to cut out the volume-only ten from 15 original tables were printed.

After the release of the book, the opinion of colleagues-psychiatrists about Rorshah’s methodology suddenly worsened. The original interest that they showed in his innovative work was replaced by sharp criticism. The accusations of charlatanism rained down against Herman, which, admitted, he stoically transferred, without ceasing to improve his test. He sincerely considered this work the starting point of the huge direction of psychology.

Alas, his plans were not destined to come true. In the year, German Rorshah suddenly died of peritonitis. He was only 37 years old.Only decades later, Rorshah’s scientific activity was appreciated, and the test, named after him, today is one of the most common and popular in the world. Author profiles.