The Unsound Failure of My Inkblot Test

“What does this look like?”

I spent time on that one. It was my mind, I granted it no permission to grow wings and take flight on me. It did so anyways.

“They—the two people could be fighting over the puppy, like a tug-of-war with a leash?” That reminded me of my parents, who I haven’t thought about for ages. My parents divorced and they constantly fought over me and my sister.

I was placed in a provincially run reform school for deep-dyed and delinquent girls aged 11 to 19. The girls in this kind of place became wards of the province and the parents relinquished their rights as guardians. Many of us had committed trifling crimes. I myself had been caught smoking. This marked me as a girl “destined for adult criminality.” A bunch of baloney…

“You’re free to interpret the image in any way you see fit, there are no right or wrong answers here. Just give as many responses as possible…”

He recorded every answer I gave. My eyes darted back and forth on each card I was shown. Who would have guessed that a card 18 by 24 cms, and a wild imagination would bring about such a diagnosis?

This test served to assess how difficult or easy I would make life for the staff. It birthed the gnawing thoughts that somehow the psychologist possessed the power—that he could peer into my soul. This in turn forced me to look inside and wonder what it was that the psychologist could see. Did he not understand that I just was a child in need of nurturing?

He couldn’t see that. Apparently, my responses to the blots revealed answers that were highly personal, illogical, and bizarre.

This test had been a failure. The inkblot, allegedly, told a tale of a girl with schizophrenia. When really, I had been suffering from melancholia. Love was needed. Not an asylum for an unsound mind.