Using the Rorschach for exploring the concept of transitional space within the political context of the Middle East

✍ Scribed by Shira Tibon; Jonathan E. Handelzalts; Yifat Weinberger

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 176 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1742-3341
• DOI: 10.1002/aps.30

✦ Synopsis

The paper presents an application of a new Rorschach index, the Reality-Fantasy Scale (RFS) for evaluating the extent to which educated Israeli Jews and Arabs manifest a similar adaptive and functional ability in preserving psychic transitional space. The RFS is a psychodynamic oriented diagnostic tool, based on Comprehensive System for scoring and interpreting the Rorschach, and designed to operationalize concept of potential space. The scale is based on a paradigm that conceptualizes the Rorschach task as inviting the subject to enter the intermediate transitional space between inner and outer reality. The RFS ranges from -5 to +5, and a score of zero indicates adaptive and functional use of potential space. The results point to a basic similarity between two groups of Jewish ( n = 41) and Arab ( n = 14) non-patients both using adaptively inner space between reality and fantasy. These results are discussed in terms of current psychoanalytic thought of relationality, political psychology research, cross-cultural personality assessment, and the empirical study of psychoanalytic concepts.