Rorschach movement and dreams: A validation study using drug-induced dream-deprivation.

To test the hypotheses that dream deprivation would produce an increase in quantity of projected movement and a change in its quality in the direction of body-dissolution imagery, 20 Ss were tested with Holtzman inkblots before and after 2 nights of drug-induced dream deprivation. Their performance was compared with that of 30 non-dream-deprived controls. Results were significant in the predicted direction and were interpreted as offering support for Rorschach's views on the fundamental similarity between movement and dreams due to the centrality of kinesthetic experience in both. Additional findings on space were congruent with Fonda's view of space as resistance to internal, rather than external, forces. More specifically, in the present study, space was interpreted as resistance to movement. Herman Rorschach felt that there was a crucial similarity between movement responses and dreams in that kinesthetic experience in the absence of overt motor activity was central to both. Support for part of this formulation exists. Beginning with the work of Singer, Meltzoff, and Goldman (1952) and Meltzoff, Singer, and Korchin (1953), a great deal of evidence has accumulated to show that Rorschach was correct about the relationship between motor inhibition and the movement response (Bendick &