The Object Relations Technique: “Utility for Assessment”

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Paul M. Lerner, M.D.

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Dr. Lerner (1937-2006) was a President of the Society for Personality Assessment (S.P.A.)

and the author of books including “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach”

 

The Object Relations Technique (O.R.T.), as Dr. Shaw observes, is an assessment instrument whose basic format may be summarized as integrating “Rorschach and T.A.T. sensibilities.” In reintroducing the Technique with this new edition he has updated and eloquently augmented its original conceptual base, set forth a highly refined and sophisticated system for analyzing its response data, and provided a rationale that links scorable responses with broader personality functioning. Here I offer some thoughts on the current status of personality science as a whole, and situate the O.R.T. within a distinct orientation on assessment I designate generically as ‘conceptual.’ Lastly I will comment on a certain, major contemporary shift in psychoanalytic thinking of which the O.R.T. is now evidently also a significant part.

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I believe the O.R.T. — both as first conceived (Phillipson, 1955) and in its present, more evolved form (Shaw, 2002) — is best understood, employed and evaluated from a distinctly conceptual position. I should note for immediate clarification that this does not imply any preference as to theoretical frame of reference in one's work with the instrument. Whereas by title and developmental background the O.R.T. has been grounded from its onset in the rich tradition of Object Relations theory, in other words, as a basic method it also exists independently of that or any other psychodynamic theory in particular.

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A conceptual orientation as meant here addresses the need to forge connecting links between two main sets of considerations: behavior with its psychodynamic substrate on one hand, and task performance strictly speaking on the other (Lerner, 1998). David Rapaport (Rapaport, Gill & Schafer, 1945-1946) reflected this seminally, for example, when he based his approach to validity on certain models of cognitive process and structure. From the organization of a subject's thinking, as evidenced in the assessment setting — including of such subprocesses as anticipation, concept formation, near and remote recall, judgment, attention and concentration — Rapaport would draw powerful inferences concerning other important facets of the total personality and patterns of behavior.

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In bridging test responses with more general behavior and its underlying dynamics in a manner quite different from Rapaport's, Dr. Shaw's key concept is perception and, accordingly, a perceptual approach to the study of personality. A brief excerpt from his text embodies this concisely: “Perception, then — like all of intelligence and all of action — is a function of the total subject, in humans the total person, and the study of perception thus becomes an approach in its own right to personality.” The special advantage of a perceptual approach, what is more, "lies in its ability to bypass or undercut massively overlearnt verbal-intellectual conventions, and thus get at the more immediate, idiosyncratic, actual phenomenal experience of each subject... what truly makes each one that one, each one that and no other."

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It is instructive to note that in assigning this place of utmost importance to perception and its emphasis on the actual phenomena of individual experience — in lieu, for example, of thought process with its inherent ties to more abstract and highly generalized structures — Dr. Shaw's rationale for the O.R.T. is consistent with another great shift now taking place in psychoanalytic psychology. I refer to the still growing modern movement away from a certain, highly rarefied classical metapsychology — one deeply couched in mechanistic terms of impersonal structures and energies — and toward a more experience-near orientation, concerned foremost with subjective meanings and the representational world. It is thus we see today that Classical Drive theory and its derivative Ego Psychology, once the very centerpieces of psychoanalytic thought, have given way to a focus on the development and experience of self and object relations. The O.R.T., both in its original and presently expanded conceptual framework, embodies and importantly exemplifies this major theoretical trend.

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Given the resurgence of interest in personality assessment over recent decades (cf. Holt, 1967; Millon, 1984) and, somewhat relatedly, a number of apposite and far-reaching changes now afoot in psychoanalytic psychology itself, I believe that Dr. Shaw has has chosen a most opportune time to reintroduce the O.R.T. in this more evolved form. When placed in broad context of what I construe to be the conceptual approach in assessment, I begin to see the potential richness of this method for both clinical and research areas of application. ◼︎

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References

Holt, R. (1967) Diagnositc testing: Present situation and future prospects. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 144, 444-465.

Lerner, P. (1998) Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Analytic Press

Millon, T. (1984) On the renaissance of personality assessment and personality theory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 450-466.

Phillipson, H. (1955) The Object Relations Technique. (Plates & Manual) London: Tavistock.

Rapaport, D., Gill, M. & Schafer, R. (1945-1946). Diagnostic Psychological Testing. Chicago: Yearbook Publishers.

Shaw, M. (2002) The Object Relations Technique: Assessing the individual. (Plates and Manual) Manhasset, New York: O.R.T. Institute.

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