Abstract
I recently completed an online personality assessment which promises prospective test-takers a “freakishly accurate description of who you are” (16 Personalities, 2021). Like many subjects of the Rorschach inkblot test, taking the test felt seductive, a bit of fun, and then, at the end, I was presented with a clear-cut personality type: a picture of “myself”. In a similar fashion, the Rorschach test promises to reveal insights about a participant’s personality. The Rorschach test was interested in the meaning test-takers projected onto the inkblots, rather than what they saw in them, and what those meanings seemed to imply about them, notably, their sexuality or potential queerness. In her recent book about this famous psychological assessment, Hubbard argues that the Rorschach test is “not just a passive object, made up of just ten ink blots, but a means of ‘making up’ people and power relationships between people” (p. 24).
In Queer Ink, Hubbard maps out and interrogates the contradictory and messy history of the Rorschach inkblot test, from being used to “diagnose homosexuality” to being taken up to resist pathologisation and serve queer liberation. This interrogation is limited by its grounding in the work of white women, with a notable absence of the involvement of women of colour, the existence of racism within psychology, and the intersection of queer liberation with civil rights movements. The liberatory reappropriation of the Rorschach test resonates with Butler’s resignification of the term “queer” with an “affirmative set of meanings” (1993, p. 223). Yet, Butler (1993, p. 223) asks “when and how does a term like ‘queer’ become subject to an affirmative resignification?” and, importantly, whether the term can “overcome its constitutive history of injury”. Hubbard engages with precisely these questions in her feminist history of the Rorschach test through a close reading of archival material alongside Hubbard’s own interviews, providing a significant account of white queer women’s histories in relation to the Rorschach within psychology as well as queer activism.
Delving into the emerging field of psychology and psychiatry, Queer Ink provides a rich overview of the history of the inkblot test: its emergence, the role of women as testers and related researchers in psychology, key researchers’ personal connections with queer communities, and differences in the UK and US in terms of use of and attitudes towards the Rorschach. Queer Ink turns a queer lens on the Rorschach test, engaging readers to re-learn the history of the test and illustrating that things are not necessarily as they have appeared: researchers, the field of psychology, and society more broadly were not as “straight” as assumed. This queering involves documenting queer and women’s lives that have been silenced or ignored. As Hubbard notes, women, and queer women in particular, are often left out of the history of psychology and hence there is a need to “re-place” them.
The book opens the history to different meanings and understandings of identities, desires, and gender than what has been seen as “normal” and “natural” within Western societies. Hubbard argues that the task becomes developing a means to read between the “straight” lines of historical records. To do so, she develops a methodological approach grounded in the work of June Hopkins, a central figure in the history of the Rorschach test. Using the “lesbian signs” developed by Hopkins, Hubbard determines that “women involved [in the test’s history] led feminist, and in some cases, potentially queer lives” (p. 67).
A central argument of Queer Ink is that the Rorschach was instrumental to queer liberation, notably the use of Hopkins and Hooker’s research in support of the depathologisation of homosexuality in the UK and US, respectively. Hubbard details the personal and professional contexts of both women (Hopkins and Hooker), their connections to queer community, and the significance of these relations on their research, arguing that without these connections, their research would likely not have happened. She shows how their research contributed to the shift in how the test was used and applied. First, Hooker’s research in the 1950s led her to conclude “very tentatively that homosexuality as a clinical entity does not exist” (p. 51). A decade later, Hopkins found that there were personality or character differences between lesbian and straight women, notably that there were signs of lesbianism; lesbian women were more independent, resilient, reserved, dominant, bohemian, self-sufficient, and composed. Hopkins viewed these differences as positive and affirmative of queerness. Worthy of more consideration is how these research findings were engaged with by queer activists and how they contributed to the struggle for queer liberation.
Hopkins’ work is shown to have challenged the then standard practice of applying research tools designed for men to women, though the impact of this within psychology and women’s health is not detailed. Further, Hopkins was (later) recognised for making important contributions to feminist research and methodology, for example, in her practice of thanking research participants. Reflexivity and accountability are central to feminist methodology, and thus again I am curious about the extent to which these two researchers influenced methodology in psychology, specifically in terms of the acknowledgement of subjectivity within research, incorporation of reflexivity, and emergence of feminist psychology.
While Hopkins and Hooker were perhaps the most prominent psychologists with respect to contributing to queer liberation, Hubbard provides a valuable discussion of other key women who were involved in the British and US projective test movement, of which the Rorschach was a part, including Margaret Lowenfeld, Theodora Alcock, Ann Kaldegg, Effie Lilian Hutton, and Mary McIntosh (some of whom were involved with the Minorities Research Group). These women and others who worked with them and/or supported their work provide evidence of a “network of support and care” within an often hostile, sexist, and homophobic work environment (p. 72).
The introduction to the Minorities Research Group marks the transition in the book from a focus on academic research to the involvement and role of activists. The Minorities Research Group was a collective of women formed in the 1960s, who aimed to challenge negative representations of queer women and to provide support and community building. Hubbard notes that their understanding and framing of lesbianism was itself grounded in medicalised language of the time, including reference to lesbianism as a “condition” that can lead to “loneliness, unhappiness, and neurosis” (p. 93). As a collective, the white women of the Minorities Research Group sought to represent themselves as “respectable and decent women, who happened to be lesbian”, demarcating boundaries between who was considered a part of the lesbian community and who was excluded based upon race and ethnicity (Black and Jewish people), and type of sexual practices (those interested in kink). This move reveals not only a lack of intersectional thinking, as Hubbard suggests, but also inherent racism.
Given this observation, it is surprising then that Hubbard does not apply the same critique applied to her examination of the lives of the women in question. Race and ethnicity are referred to in a select few places, notably in discussion of the Minorities Research Group and in Hubbard’s concluding thoughts on future work needed. With race and ethnicity not interwoven within a queer history of the inkblot test, racism within psychology as well as the association of queerness with whiteness are left unchallenged. What are the implications of this on psychology and on the ways in which psychology has been used, as Hubbard notes, as a primary means to categorise and ascertain normalcy?
A key contribution is Hubbard’s thoughtful discussion of and approach to writing about people from the past in the present-day context, specifically in relation to language and societal views on “homosexuality”. She questions the implications of “presentism” – the use of contemporary terminology when referring to people at a time when different language and social attitudes were in place. She delves into consideration of the ethics of imposing current social identity terms on those within a different historical period and acknowledges that many women may not have identified as “homosexual, invert, or lesbian”, and therefore may continue to be invisible within the history. The meanings queerness held were tied to medicalisation and pathology, and it was perceived by psychologists as “something to be prevented, avoided, and treated” (p. 43).
As someone positioned outside of psychology, in gender and sexuality studies, Queer Ink was invaluable for the rich history it offered of the field, and in particular of the women central to this history, thoughtful methodological discussions, and the importance of the relationship between academia and activism. The snippets of narratives from individuals who had taken the Rorschach at different moments in time were intriguing and I would have loved more and longer narratives to complement and inform the history of the test. It is a well-researched and written book that makes an important contribution to the queer history of projective tests, methodology, and psychology. What is critical, and indeed necessary, is for that queerness to be queered more fully, incorporating an analysis of the respectability of sexuality and of race to the centrality of whiteness within psychology and the use of projective tests, and the associated efforts and activism for depathologisation.
