Word: blot
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...many men in Harvard College, this new plan for the University, which envisages such cost-free benefits as dinner in the airy splendor of Kresge Hall or lunch in a friend's House, contains, alas, one inherent blot. Radcliffe's girls are also members of the University, and they too could eat in the Houses at will; escaping the clutches of Messrs. Hazen and Albiani, they would invade the precincts of maledom and put an end to unfettered, masculine repartee...
...without private-enterprise financing. Dilworth bounced civic heads together until everyone was cooperating on his new highways and skyways, parks and playgrounds, office buildings and housing projects. His energy created a downtown area that today is widely regarded as a model of urban sprightliness, rather than a blot of blight...
Interpretation by H.I.T. testers of what a subject sees, or thinks he sees, in a given blot depends on the same basic principle that underlies the Rorschach: that what seem, superficially, to be chance associations actually reveal a subject's emotional makeup and deep unconscious aspects of his personality. Because most of the inkblot patterns are as symmetrical as animals or as human beings themselves, most test subjects are likely to spot anatomical images-bosoms, buttocks and even more frankly sexual symbols-where the lines converge in mid-blot. It is up to the tester to judge...
...this blot, Dr. Holtzman sees a horned bat's face; "Baboons at play" is equally acceptable as a normal response. But such answers as "Reminds me of the Black Plague" are rated neurotic. Explains Holtzman: "This is an abstract association . . . an anxiety response." At the schizophrenic end of the scale the psychologist puts: "A woman's behind-pregnant, flying, you know." Most subjects agree with Holtzman: this blot reminds them of an enraged executive listening to two telephones. The response "Mud smeared on a church window" is moderately but definitely neurotic, says Holtzman, because it "shows strong hostility...
...middle of this blot, Holtzman and colleagues see a sumo wrestler. A subject who sees a fat devil flanked by two thin ones would have little to worry about. But the interpretation, "A fat cannibal king with two pregnant women," says Holtzman, "is rich with hostility toward women." A schizophrenic response: "Those things on the side look like charred tree trunks-only they're pregnant." A single offbeat response to a single inkblot, says Dr. Holtzman. "leaves the psychologist up in the air. You may have a guy who suppresses Charles Addams tendencies under a peaceful exterior...