Personality ... or, How You Became You

If you want to find out what someone knows, you might try handing him a test and a pen to take it with. If you want to find out who someone is, you might try flipping that test sheet over, breaking the pen in half, dripping its contents onto the blank page, and asking him what he sees in all that spilled ink.

At least, that was Rorschach's approach. You've probably heard of Hermann Rorschach, whether you've ever actually taken his famous inkblot test or not. In 1921, Rorschach, a young Swiss psychiatrist, published a series of ten plates, each with random-looking (though, in reality, carefully designed) ink patterns. Some are black ink on a white background, and some have splashes of color added in. The ten plates comprise the Rorschach test, which for more than eight decades has been the subject of endless debate among psychologists.

Theoretically, the test is standardized: everyone given the Rorschach is supposed to be shown the ten plates in the exact same size, order, and facing the same direction. The test-giver is meant to present each without comment and answer any questions a subject might have with a series of prepared answers. In other words, if you take the Rorschach in Davenport, Iowa, and I take it in a little village in Costa Rica, we experience it in exactly the same way.

Which is to say you and I would both be asked to respond to the ten plates in the same order, a certain number of times. Our responses are meant to be completely our own, with no help or encouragement from our respective test-givers. And because there are no right or wrong answers—we are, after all, telling our testers what we "see" in basically random patterns— the standardized way in which we take the test theoretically ensures that our differing reactions to those cards are very telling about us as individuals. (If you see nothing but scary monsters, it's a safe bet you've got a great deal of anxiety, and if I see nothing but genitals ... well, they might ask the men in the white lab coats to pick me up from the office after the test.)

The thing is, nearly a century after Rorschach gave his first inkblot test, there's still a lot of debate among mental health professionals as to its usefulness. Some argue that it's impossible to "standardize" a test like the Rorschach: how do you account for the effects of location, time of day, the mood of the subject, or how good the tester is at sticking to the test-giving script? If someone takes the inkblot test while experiencing hunger pains, can their results be fairly compared to those of someone who is perfectly comfortable? Others believe that, aside from finding basic areas of obsession, the test isn't reliable in predicting or diagnosing serious psychological disorders. In the eyes of many psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, the Rorschach test is so subjective that it proves absolutely nothing.

Which is just plain wrong, as anyone who grew up on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood can tell you.

Fred Rogers was right when, after putting on his sneakers and sweater at the start of every episode, he assured us that, "There's no one quite like you. You're special."

The Rorschach test has, for nearly a century, offered a steady stream of evidence for one psychological fact that is beyond debate: no two human beings are exactly alike, personality-wise. For in all of the tests, given in all of the settings, no two people have ever responded to Hermann Rorschach's smears of ink in exactly the same way. In hundreds of thousands of tests, no two sets of results have ever matched up. Which just proves that Fred Rogers was right when, after putting on his sneakers and sweater at the start of every episode, he assured us that, "There's no one quite like you. You're special."

You are a unique constellation of thoughts, emotions, behaviors, motives, perceptions, values, and ways of relating to other people. You have your very own history, or "backstory" (as screenwriters like to say), which has distinctive geographical and socioeconomic settings and boasts a colorful cast of characters; namely your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, and so on. All of these circumstances, places, and people are forces that have shaped in you the qualities and traits that collectively make up what's known as your personality. It's that personality of yours, developed almost entirely by early adolesence, that dictates every romantic choice you've made or will make, and that determines much of the course of every relationship you'll ever have, romantic or otherwise.

The reason that your personality is so unique—the same reason you'll never duplicate anyone else's Rorschach test answers—is that no one else has had exactly the same collection of circumstances and experiences as you. Not your parents, not your best friends, not your lovers, not even your siblings. In fact, before we jump into the basic truths Bernie Katz has learned about personality, let's talk about siblings for a moment, and look at the role of "nature" in the nature versus nurture debate as it relates to personality.

I come from a family of eight children, with a ten-year spread between the oldest and youngest. (A little quick math indicates that my mom spent 60 percent of the decade between 1955 and 1965 pregnant. We're still debating whether this means she deserves a medal or a thorough psychological exam.) And in many ways, we're all alike. The children of Peggy and Leo Van Munching, Jr., are all polite: we all hold doors and say "thank you" and offer to sit in the middle seat when on an airplane with a spouse. We all tend toward sarcasm ... though some try a little too hard (that'd be me) and some can bring down the house almost effortlessly (that'd be my brothers Pieter and Chris). To be sure, there are dozens of other ways in which the eight of us can be used as evidence for the "nature" argument.

Which might mean something if there weren't hundreds of ways in which each of us is completely different from the other seven, and maybe more tellingly, from either of our parents.

Here's the correct, scientifically based response to the person who points to the almost eerie similarities among some siblings over the course of a "nature versus nurture" debate: "Well... duh." Of course some siblings are very much alike, even beyond their looks and their basic genetic predispositions. Considering that brothers and sisters spend their earliest years sharing many (if not most) circumstances and relationships, there's no surprise that their experiences are comparable. In my family's case, eight kids in ten years makes for some very similar formative...