Disordered Thinking and the Rorschach

Certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Psychology, James H. Kleiger, Psy.D., is Director of Postdoctoral Psychology Training at the Menninger Clinic and a Fellow of the Society for Personality Assessment.  Dr. Kleiger is also a senior candidate and teaching associate at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.

• Part I: Introduction to Thought Disorder and the Rorschach. Conceptualizing Disordered Thought. The Rorschach Assessment of Disordered Thinking. Part II: Thought Disorder Scoring Systems. The Rapaport Method. Holt's Primary Process Scoring System. The Thought Disorder Index (TDI). Exner's Special Scores and Schizophrenia Index (SCZI). Secondary Thought Disorder Scoring Systems. Part III: Conceptual and Theoretical Underpinnings. Psychoanalytic Understanding of Thought Disorder Scores. Confabulatory Thinking. Combinative Thinking. Contaminated Thinking. Paleologic Thinking. Part IV: Differential Diagnosis of Rorschach Thought Disorder. Schizophrenia-Spectrum Disorders. Affective Disorders. Borderline Syndromes. Disordered Thinking Associated with Other Conditions. Creativity of Disordered Thinking? Final Thoughts.

"Psychiatric disorders, however defined, affect thought organization. Indeed, the most severe of these conditions, the schizophrenias and the major affective disorders, can be recognized by tell-tale ways in which thinking is derailed and disorganized. The most powerful clues to differential diagnosis of psychoses, we have learned, lie in the nature of thought organization. Clinicians and researchers will treasure James Kleiger's thorough and dispassionately critical survey, which will provide them with a strategic perspective on diagnostic issues in this vitally important domain. Disordered Thinking and the Rorschach is a valuable and much-needed resource for clinical and research inquiries."- Philip S. Holzman, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Harvard University"James Kleiger has produced a superb piece of scholarship that extends from thorough coverage of theory and research to useful guidelines for clinical practice. This clearly written and extensively referenced book provides a storehouse of information concerning the nature of disordered thinking, its manifestations in Rorschach responses, and the possible diagnostic implications of a thought-disordered Rorschach protocol. Rorschach researcher and practitioners alike will read it with pleasure and profit."- Irving B. Weiner, Ph.D., University of South Florida