Building upon a unique method

 

The origination of the Object Relations Technique predates the birth of ORT Institute by four decades, a time during which the ORT saw enormous successes while also sometimes standing on the brink of obscurity. Conceived in 1955 by Herbert Phillipson at London's famed Tavistock Institute, the creation of the unique ORT Plates (stimulus images) was a watershed moment in the history of object relations. Incorporating both explicit figurative cues and abstraction, the Plates take a unique place in the pantheon of projective methods. However unlike the Rorschach and TAT, the ORT is not a projective test — it is a tool of assessment which allows for mapping the personality along specific developmental and relational lines.

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For the remainder of the 20th century, the ORT lacked a proper manual, scoring system, or standard for administration. Many substandard reproductions of the ORT Plates also entered into circulation, and for these reasons the Technique remained inaccessible to many psychologists. However by the 1970s the ORT managed to leap the pond to the United States, and it also found eager adoption in the Scandinavian countries and Latin America. In New York, Herbert Phillipson's associate Dr. James Bagby continued ORT development into what became known as the Bagby adaptation. Phillipson and Bagby were then joined by Dr. Martin A. Shaw, and the group made major progress through the 1980s in further developing the ORT.

 

Delivering tools to psychologists

 

As a clinical psychologist employing the ORT, and a scholar of visual perception, Dr. Shaw saw the potential for a fully operationalized administration and scoring system for the Technique. Dedicating himself to clinical refinement and validation, Dr. Shaw emerged with his first adaptation of the ORT in the 1990s — work which earned major praise from Dr. James Grotstein (view) and Dr. Paul Lerner (view), two luminaries of depth psychology.

 

The ORT was arriving at last, and ORT Institute was formed in 1995 as an umbrella for further work and publishing. In 2003, ORT Institute published Dr. Shaw's major work, The Object Relations Technique: Assessing the Individual. This landmark volume, now in its second printing (2010) serves as the first ORT Manual since Mr. Phillipson's original publication. It embodies a fully operationalized method for ORT administration, and analysis and scoring of results. It allows the practitioner to build a rich relational-developmental map of the subject: a powerful tool appropriate to both clinical and research settings.

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Publishing and safeguarding the stimulus

 

Viewing an original printing of the ORT stimulus images, known as the ORT Plates, one immediately notices their rich visual subtlety. Substandard reproductions of the ORT Plates diminish their potency and make it impossible to accurately compare ORT research results. ORT Institute was authorized by ORT originator Herbert Phillipson to address this situation by restoring and ensuring the long-term integrity of the stimulus images.

 

In collaboration with imaging experts at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Carl Zeiss Foundation, ORT Institute brought an accurate new edition of the ORT Plates to print in the 1990s. Aside from the original 1955 printing, this is the only edition of the materials accurate to the original lithographs, and the only edition fully authorized by Herbert Phillipson and with the blessings of his Estate. The Institute houses now a lithographic film archive ensuring that the ORT Plates can be correctly reproduced and verified in the future.

 

Developing a worldwide O.R.T. community

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The Institute today works to connect ORT users around the world.

 

We use our funding to promote adoption of the Technique, proactively replace improper copies of the ORT Plates with our authorized edition (often at little or no cost for practitioners who meet qualifications), and to make the ORT Manual accessible to a new generation of researchers, clinicians, and selected students in 23 countries.

 

The Manual is today being translated into French and Japanese, and new training programs are being developed for the United States, Canada, and Japan.