A Rorschach investigation of mothers of behaviorally disturbed infants.

This investigation focuses on one facet of the interactional family, parent-child, mother-infant matrix of behaviorally disturbed infants: the personality of mother as primary caregiver. Rorschach test behavior of mothers (N = 30) of behaviorally disturbed infants were compared with two normative samples. The Rorschach test was found to indicate certain atypical psychological patterns among these mothers. Differences emerged in intellectual sphere variables: number of responses (R), common detail responses (D), rare detail responses (Dd), number of accurate form percepts (F+), percentage of form percepts that are accurate (F+%), percentage of responses with animal content (A%), and popular percepts (P). Other response trends emerged in the affective sphere: percentage of pure form responses (F%) and in the interpersonal sphere: whole human content (H) and the ratio of the whole human content to human detail content (H:Hd), as well as to the test as a whole. Based on these results, hypotheses are generated for further investigation, particularly of traits in the areas of cognitive processing and the capacity for interpersonal relations.