Leslie Phillips

Symptomatology of hospitalized psychiatric patients in Japan and in the United States: a study of cultural differences.

Groups of hospitalized psychiatric patients in Japan and in the United States were compared in their discrete symptom manifestations as well as in their dominant roles (turning against self, turning against others, avoidance of others) and spheres (thought, affect, somatization, action). With differences in social competence, age and diagnosis reduced to a minimum by application of individual matching across cultures, male Japanese patients were found to exceed their American counterparts in thought dominance; among women, the role of avoidance of others was disproportionately encountered in the United States. In both sex groups, Japanese patients tended toward general and diffuse symptoms; among Americans, the trend was toward elaboration and specificity. Parallels were sought for these findings in the accumulated store of information concerning Japanese cultural patterns, socialization practices and personality characteristics. It was concluded that a degree of continuity obtains between the adaptive and pathological features prevalent within a cultural milieu. Likewise, it appears to be more than a fortuitous convergence that modes of therapeutic intervention favored in Japan stress relationship, intuition and somatic treatment and underemphasize self-understanding and insight.

Studies of Rorschach Content: A Review of the Research Literature Part 1: Traditional Content Categories

Abstract The results of systematic research study of traditional Rorschach content are reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the following problem areas: population norms, ontogenesis, psychopathology, intellectual and personality characteristics, and situational influences. The yield of this work is then compared with the interpretive statements found in several of the contemporary Rorschach textbooks. It is concluded that no single content category is uniquely indicative of a specific diagnostic category, a personality variable, or a situationally induced factor. The principal value of content variables is seen in the indication that they provide of the nature and adequacy of an individuals relationship to external reality, his social interaction, and his attitude toward his impulse life.

The competence criterion for mental health programs

Mental health programs are ordinarily assessed in terms of the extent of services rendered and the professional level of staff. These criteria do not permit an accurate judgment of the value of these services. It is proposed that measures of the effectiveness and cost of such programs are required. The relative contributions of an index of therapeutic impact versus a measure of improvement in “social competence” are discussed. It is concluded that the competence criterion is more objective and quantifiable in nature and more directly relevant to publicly supported mental health programs.

Studies of Rorschach Content: A Review of Research Literature Part III: Theoretical Formulations

Summary The accumulated yield of Rorschach content research is considered in relation to experimental investigations and theoretical formulations that have originated upon the convergence of the domains of perception, cognition, and personality. The act of meaningfully labeling inkblot stimuli involves perceptual fitting of personality-determined hypotheses, communicated in a specific interpersonal context. Accordingly, perceptual, personality, and social influences upon attribution of content to Rorschach stimuli are discussed. A variety of “false positives” and “false negatives” reduce the degree of correspondence between Rorschach content variables and real-life individual characteristics. Several of the possible sources of the “false positives” and “false negatives” are traced to stylistic, defensive, and other mediating factors that are interposed between the presence of a motivational or personality characteristic and its expression through content on the Rorschach test.