James Wood, a University of Texas psychology professor who would soon emerge as the Rorschach’s leading detractor, and two coauthors published a highly critical article in the respected journal Psychological Science. “Basic issues regarding the reliability and validity of the Comprehensive System have not been resolved,”

What’s Wrong With the Rorschach?, written with M. Teresa Nezworski, Scott Lilienfeld, and Howard Garb and released in 2003.

“I make no apology” for relying on such loosely compiled data, insists Exner.

Every one of the students has the same thick book before her, A Primer for Rorschach Interpretation.

Today personality testing is a $400-million industry, one that’s expanding annually by 8 percent to 10 percent.

The second of the group’s criticisms concerns the “norms” provided by the Comprehensive System, or the standards of normality against which test takers are judged.

The Rorschach routinely “overpathologizes” healthy people, Wood and the others maintain, making them seem much more dysfunctional than they really are.

Today it’s administered to an estimated 15 million Americans each year, in spite of the fact that it features invasive questions about test takers’ sex lives and bathroom habits.

The test’s numerous detractors charge that the Rorschach—originally designed for use with psychiatric patients but now frequently given to normal people—“overpathologizes,”