Basic personality in Murupara : an experiment in ethnopsychology using the Rorschach test

Abstract

When this study was begun it was the writer's intention to make use of the Rorschach test and in dreams and conversations there were many occasions when great things were expected; the confirmation of this hypothesis and of that; a key to the depth psychology of the Maori; a precise conjunction of culture and personality; and perhaps, since the exigencies of field work were being experienced for the first time, it was expected that this test might be the Ethnopsychologists' touch-stone - the by-pass of the labour of field processes. These naive expectations have not, of course, been fulfilled. It seems clear enough that the uses of the test are nowhere yet as wide as this. The study developed and forced its own limitations upon expectancies. The appropriateness of the test to the solution of certain problems, to the support of certain types of hypotheses and to answering certain sorts of field query can be seen in what is to follow. As both guide and check it has its place but it neither replaces field processes nor does it reduce research labour. Furthermore its use requires the adoption of a definite frame of reference of a theory of personality and of evaluation and this too will be made explicit in the chapters which follow.