Everyone knows Rorschach was a psychiatrist. The lesser known fact is that he was also a painter. In truth, he was a painter first, and there is ample evidence to suggest that he did a good bit of hands on touching up to make his ink blots "work." The significance of these few details is that the so-called ink blots created by Rorschach may be profitably conceived of as paintings of a sort. Indeed, they are abstract paintings created without the intention of reference to anything external. This is what makes them such wonderful devices for exploration: the viewer sees nothing he or she can identify in the world of things, and so is free to explore inwardly and imaginatively. The limitation of the Rorschach Test, however, is that it is used as a diagnostic tool. This means that what the viewer, or subject, sees is interpreted to mean certain things. In fact, it is even presumed that one should see certain things (like figures and motion) and not see other things (like razor blades, for example).
Rorschach's work was, of course, applied within the medical model, a paradigm in which the central features are Diagnose and Treat. If we lift them out of that context, however, we can easily imagine them in another paradigm, whose main features are Explore and Identify.
The work of Robert Strang, which is featured on this web site, functions in just this way. Strang's paintings and sculptures are designed to help viewers discover unconscious aspects of their own self-consciousness.
Unlike the fleeting dream, the random cloud form or the puddle, the abstract object is static, and it is through the process of engaging the static object that self-discovery begins. Because the self is continuous, the object too must be constant in time, for the effort is always one of creating more unity, more continuity of consciousness. In order for this to happen, one must be able to refer back to same object again and again.
By virtue of duration in time, then, exploring the infinite self through the finite, static object reveals the true nature of the relationship between what we call "world" and what we call "self" - that they are inseparable, interpenetrating and interdependent. It follows from this that changes in the self lead to changes in the world.
Accordingly the process of perceiving the abstract painting (a process which results in what we can an "Almost Story") enables us to realize the inseparable relationship between self and object (self and world). Subsequently we discover through our perception of the painting, new aspects of ourselves - and therefore also new ways of being in the world.
These new ways of being are discovered through engagement of the object by means of feeling, not knowing; which is why no one but the perceiver can define the object (or the world). That is, no third party definition made from a so-called neutral perspective is even possible, much less desirable. Rather, it is always a subjective definition that pertains to the person looking, living and exploring the object at a feeling level - through the "feeling life." For this reason it is also true that only changes accomplished through one's feeling life can lead to changes in one's world, or the object one perceives.
One of the features of this web site is the Gallery, which contains a rotating assortment of paintings and sculptures from which you can select and use for the purpose of Exploring and Identifying features of your own psychology.
Listen to an interview demonstrating the use of art from association to story.