When the Unconscious Contents Are Expressed in Both Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) and Dreams: An Experimental Study

The Rorschach cards may elicit components of personality functioning that escape consciousness but which may influence observable performance during the test. Similarly, themanifest content of dreams may contain unconscious experiential elements that contribute to the formation of the content that the subject then remembers and tells to other people. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible correspondence between the content of a person’s dreams and the attributions made by the same person when viewing the Rorschach inkblot designs. Participants aged 18–64 years were selected based on criteria related to the frequency of dream recall (i.e., at least once per week). The final sample of our study consisted of 41 individuals (24 women) aged 20–57 years (M = 27.10; SD = 8.09). The dreamnarratives were collected via email and coded according to theRorschach Performance Assessment System. There was an association between the content of the dreams and the Rorschach responses in relation to the presence of immature visual imagery, the tendency to see things in perspective, possible occurrence of dissociative experiences, physical worries, and ideas of harm, feelings of fear, a sense of danger and pain, and sadism, that is, disturbing contents possibly related to the loosening of censorship mechanisms during the dream state. This is the first study to examine the possible relationship between dream content and Rorschach responses using an empirical approach capable of understanding the unconscious and subconscious components underlying psychological functioning.