THE RORSCHACH HUMAN-EXPERIENCE VARIABLE, INTERPERSONAL RELATEDNESS, AND OBJECT REPRESENTATION IN NONPATIENTS

W. Perry and D. J. Viglione (1991) combined human representational var iables from J. E. Exner's (1993) Comprehensive System in their Ego Imp airment Index to create the Human Experience Variable (HEV). To valida te the HEV, 105 nonpatient women completed the Bell Object Relations I nventory (M. Bell, 1991) and the Rorschach. Their spouses also rated t he quality of these women's interpersonal relatedness by completing a modified Bell Object Relations Inventory and the Emotional Maturity Ra ting Form (H. Bessell, 1984). The HEV was significantly related to the quality of interpersonal relatedness, after considering Rorschach mea sures of psychopathology and ''nonhuman'' Rorschach images. Results in dicate that representations of self and other accessed through the Ror schach account for unique variance in the prediction of the quality of interpersonal relationships, thus supporting the validity of the Rors chach and the concept of object relations.