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The Interaction of AggressiveMovement Responses andAnatomy Responses on theRorschach in Producing AnxietyEdwin E. Wagner aa University of Akron , USAPublished online: 16 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Edwin E. Wagner (1961) The Interaction of Aggressive MovementResponses and Anatomy Responses on the Rorschach in Producing Anxiety, Journal ofProjective Techniques, 25:2, 212-215, DOI: 10.1080/08853126.1961.10381028

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The Interaction of Aggressive Movement Responses and Anatomy Responses on the Rorschach in Producing Anxiety

EDWIN E. WAGNER University of Akron

This study was prompted by the clinical observation that individuals seeking therapy who gave both aggres- sive movement responses and anatom- ical responses to the Rorschach seemed to display manifest anxiety during subsequent counseling sessions. Oddly enough, the appearance of just one of the “signs”, aggression or an- atomy, regardless of the frequency of occurrence in a single protocol, was not sufficient for a prediction of anxi- ety. Some kind of interaction seemed to be indicated, but the search for a rationale to logically explain this pos- tulated interaction was impeded by the lack of agreement among Ror- schach experts concerning the nuclear meaning of the anatomy response. While aggressive responses can be re- garded, at face value, as representing aggressive tendencies, the exact inter- pretation of an anatomy response is still an open question.

Rorschach (1942) believed anatomy responses were related to feelings of intellectual inadequacy. Amplifying on Rorschach’s postulation, Piotrow- ski (1957, p. 349) suggests that anato- my responses “may easily symbolize special and difficult knowledge, the pursuit of which is fraught with dan- gers and anxiety”. Klopfer (1954, p. 384) , believes that anatomical re- sponses “may serve as an attempt to deal with feelings about oneself so as to impress others with technical knowledge”, but urges caution in at- tempting to interpret anatomy re- sponses without reference to other formal scoring components. Others have pointed to the relation between anxiety and anatomical responses without insisting on any specific inter- pretations of the anatomy category (Elizur, 1959; Rav, 1951). Ross

(1940) noted that anatomical perse- veration is often encountered in brain damage patients. The relation of specific anatomical responses to anxi- ety hysteria has long been acknowl- edged, but falls short of establishing a basic meaning for anatomy content.

Perhaps the interpretation of the anatomy response which provides the most direct explanation of this sup- posed relationship between aggression and anatomy in generating anxiety, is the sychoanalytic one advanced by Philgps and Smith. They have as- serted that “anatomy content reflects a sensitivity to and concern with the expression of destructive impulses” (Phillips and Smith, 1953, p. 228). If Phillips and Smith are correct then, logically, it could be anticipated that the presence of both aggressive content and anatomy content in a Rorschach protocol should indicate anxiety. Those individuals who experience ag- gressive feelings and yet fear the overt expression of their impulses should be more anxious than those who, while fearing their own destructive impulses are not strongly motivated to behave aggressively, or those who are strongly motivated to behave aggressively but have no fear of expressing their de- structive impulses. While this present study is most concerned with empir- ically validating the interrelation of aggressive and anatomical content in producing anxiety, it is assumed that such a relationship, if significant, would most support the position ad- vocated by Phillips and Smith regard- ing the basic meaning of the anatomy response.

Aggressive movement responses were operationally defined, in this study, as those responses involving human or animal action implicitly

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EDWIN E. WAGNER

or explicitly directed against other humans or animals, and operationally interpreted as representing important action tendencies of which the person is wholly or partially aware (Klopfer, et al., 1954, pp. 254, 265; Piotrowski, 1957, pp. 140, 190). An anatomy response was defined as "those which contain the image of a part of an organism, human or animal, which is not visible without cutting the body open" (Piotrowski, 1957, p. 348). Ex- amples are: insides, blood, kidneys, skeleton, etc.

PROCEDURE Volunteer subjects were drawn

from students enrolled in the intro- ductory course in psychology at Tem- p!" University. Each student was given the Rorschach test followed by the Z P A T Anxiety Scale. Choice of Cattell's IPAT as the anxiety predic- tor was based on several considera- tions: (1) It is short and non-threat- ening; (2) It yields an objective,

uantitative score; (3) According to %attell, the scale is especially adapted to private counseling situations where subjects have little cause to falsify answers; (4) Besides factorial or inter- nal validity, external validation has been established through clinical ap- praisals, physiological measures, and discriminations between normals, neu- rotics, and anxiety hysterics; (5) Use of the IPAT eliminates unconscious bias which could conceivably affect "clinical" evaluations of anxiety.

For methodological convenience, only those protocols which contained at least one anatomy or aggressive re- sponse were retained for analysis. Testing was maintained until 40 such protocols were obtained: 22 males and 18 females. The Rorschachs were scored by a clinical psychologist with four years experience in administra- tion and scoring of the Rorschach test who otherwise had no knowledge of the purpose of the study. A chi- square was computed between IPAT anxiety scores and aggressive move- ment responses, disregarding the pres- ence or absence of anatomy responses,

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to test whether or not aggression alone produces anxiety. Likewise, a chi-square was computed between IPAT scores and anatomy responses to establish whether or not anatomy responses alone are correlated with anxiety. Finally, a point-biserial corre- lation was computed between the IPAT scores and those protocols which had either anatomy or aggres- sive content but not both (one-sign group), and those having both anato-

TABLE I Sex, Age, IPAT Anxiety Scores, and Number of Rorschach Ag- gressive Movement Scores and Anato- my Scores for Forty Undergraduates Sex M' M" M" Fb MU

Fb Mb Fb Mb Fb Mb Mb Mb Fb Mb Ma M. Fb Mb M' M. Mb F' Fb Fb Fb Mb F" F" Fb Mb F" Fa Fb F" M" M. Ma M. Fb Mean S. D.

Age 20 22 20 29 35 19 20 19 20 21 24 22 23 19 18 25 21 21 19 23 21 21 20 18 18 19 18 18 20 21 22 18 18 18 19 21 28 19 22 19 20.9 3.7

Two-sign group h. One-sign group

IPAT 32 37 37 23 56 42 16 15 18 13 19 28 32 18 27 46 31 36 27 21 29 26 32 18 30 29 20 37 46 20 31 51 45 25 40 26 47 47 10 28 30.4 11.0

4%. 2 2 2 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 1 0 0 1 1 0 2 2 0 0 1 0 4 0 0 3 1 1 3 2 2 3 3 0 1.2 1.3

Anat. 3 1 5 0

11 6 2 1 8 1 5 1 3 0 3 3 4 3 1 3 1 1 2 0 2 8 0 5 2 3 1 5 1 0 2 1 6 1 4 3 2.7 2.5

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214 Aggressive Mouement and Anatomy Responses and Anxiety

my and aggressive content (two-sign

RESULTS Table I reports the age, sex, IPAT

anxiety scores, Rorschach aggressive movement scores, and Rorschach an- atomy scores for the 40 undergradu- ates used in this study.

The skewness and scatter of the aggressive and anatomy scores necessi- tated compression into four-cell chi- square tables to test for significant re- lationships with the I P A T Anxiety Scale. As shown in Tables I1 and I11 there were no statistically significant trends.

group) *

TABLE I1 Chi-square Comparing Ag- gressive Movement Responses and IPAT Anxiety Scores

Aggressive Movement IPAT Scores None 1 and Over 10 - 29 12 9 21 30 - 59 6 13 19

Using Yates’ Correction for Continuity, X2 = 1.69 < .05. For 1 df P .05= 3.841

- - - 18 22 40

TABLE I11 Chi-square Comparing An- atomy Responses and IPAT Anxiety Scores

Anatomy Responses IPAT Scores 0 - 2 3 and Over 10 - 29 13 8 21 30 - 59 8 11 19

21 19 40 Using Yates’ Correction for Continuity, X2 = .87 < .05. For 1 df P.05 = 3.841

- - -

A point-biserial correlation of .561 was obtained between the IPAT anxi- ety scores and the “one-sign” and “two-sign” groups. The correlation was in the expected direction, i.e. anxi- ety correlated with the presence of the combination of aggressive and anato- my respunses in the Rorschach rec- ords. Since there is no known test of significance for a point-biserial corre- lation, a t value was computed be- tween the means of the “two-sign”

and “one-sign” groups. The t was sig- nificant beyond the .01 level of con- fidence.

DISCUSSION The Chi-square tables, although

non-significant, suggest the possibility of low, positive correlations with the addition of more cases. Therefore, this lack of significant association is probably best regarded as indicating the need for evaluating the categories on an interactive basis rather than attempting to correlate aggression and anatomy, as isolated variables, with anxiety.

The most important finding in this study was the positive correlation be- tween anxiety, as measured by the IPAT, and the presence of both ag-

TABLE IV Point-Biserial Correlation Between IPAT Anxiety Scores and Presence or Absence of Both Aggres- sive Movement and Anatomy Re- sponses on the Rorschach, for Forty Undergraduates:

IPAT anxiety scores Group Mean S.D. S.E.

Bothsignsgroup: N=17“ 37.6 11.0 2.8 Onesigngroup: N=23h 25.1 7.5 1.6 t = 4.0; significant at .01 level of confidence rph = .561 a Group having both anatomy and aggres- sive movement content on Rorschachs. Group having either anatomy or aggressive movement content on Rorschachs, but not both.

Total: N=40 30.4 11.0

gressive movement and anatomy re- sponses in the Rorschach protocols. Cattell (1957, p. 9) reports a reliabil- ity coefficient of .84 for his IPAT scale with 240 normal adults. Taking into account possible unreliability in the administration and scoring of the Rorschach, a point-biserial correla- tion of .561 must be regarded as sub- stantial. Even when the limitations of this study are considered-the re- stricted population, the elimination of cases in which anatomy and/or aggres- sive movement did not appear, the use of only one anxiety predictor- there would appear to be an undeni-

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EDWIN E. WAGNER

able interaction between aggressive movement and anatomy responses in generating anxiety. Whether such a relationship necessarily implies the in- terpretation of the anatomy response put forth by Phillips and Smith is still a debatable question. Certainly, interpretations of the anatomy re- sponse offered by others, including Rorschach himself are not precluded by these findings. I t could be postu- lated, for example, that feelings of in- tellectual inferiority would reduce self-confidence thus hampering the display of aggression and generating tension and anxiety. However, the position advocated by Phillips and Smith would seem to provide a logical and direct explanation of the ob- served interrelationship between an- atomy and aggression, and i t is felt that this study provides tentative support for their psychoanalytic in- terpretation.

It is interesting to note that deduc- ing consequences from empirical scor- ing referents and inductively validat- ing these consequences against objec- tive criteria need not be confined to single Rorschach variables but can also be fruitfully applied to variables which mutually interact. T h e prin- ciple of the interaction of Rorschach components has long been advocated by Rorschach experts and this study provides an illustration of how hy- potheses based on an interactive ra- tionale may prove useful in validating those scoring categories which have proven difficult to analyze singly.

Finally, this study is best regarded as suggestive rather than definitive. Further research should be directed toward verifying the interaction of aggression and anatomy responses in producing anxiety with other groups and under varying conditions. Also, the validity of the position held by Phillips and Smith has been sup-

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ported rather than confirmed by this study and further research is needed before the question of the basic mean- ing of the anatomy response can be satisfactorily resolved.

SUMMARY It was postulated that anatomy re-

sponses represent fear of destructive impulses, and that therefore a com- bination of aggressive movement re- sponses coupled with anatomy re- sponses on the Rorschach test should produce anxiety. This hypothesis was tentatively substantiated, within the limitations of this study, by a point- biserial correlation of .561 between anxiety as measured by the I P A T Anxiety Scale, and the presence or absence of both aggression and anato- my responses, on the Rorschach rec- ords of 40 subjects.

REFERENCES Cattell, Raymond B. Handbook for the IPAT

Anxiety Scale. Champaign, Illinois: Insti- tute for Personality and Ability Testing, 1957.

Elizur, A. Content Analysis of the Rorschach with Regard to Anxiety, and Hostility. Rorschach Res. Exch. and J . Proj. tech.

Klopfer, Bruno; Ainsworth, Mary D.; Klop- fer, Walter G.; & Holt, Robert R. Develop- ments in the Rorschach technique. New York: World Book, 1954.

Lindner, R. M. Analysis of Rorschach test by content. J . clin. Psychopathol. 1947, 8, 707-719.

Phillips, L. & Smith, J. G. Rorschach inter- pretation: Advanced technique. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1953.

Piotrowski, 2. A. Perceptaiialysis. New York: Macmillan, 1957.

Rav, J . Anatomy responses in the Rorschach test. J. proj. Tech., 1951, 15, 433-443.

Rorschach, H. Psychodiagnostics Bern: Hans Huber, 1942.

Ross, W. D. Anatomical perseveration in Rorschach records, Rorsch. Res. Exch.,

1949, 13, 247-284.

1940, 4, 138-145.

Received September 22, 1960

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