odditiesanalysisThe Public Domain Review1857–1915 · Germany
Inkblot books of the 1800s turned folded ink smudges into demons, a century before Rorschach
The brain tends to see faces and figures in random shapes, a tendency called pareidolia. From the mid-1800s, a small genre of books used this by printing inkblots that readers were encouraged to see as creatures. Justinus Kerner began in 1857 by dropping excess ink on paper and folding it, which produced mirror-symmetric blots that looked like faces and demons. Later books, such as Gobolinks in 1896 and Blottentots in 1907, turned the blots into playful children's games. The method was an earlier version of what Hermann Rorschach used in his psychological test in the 1920s. Many of these books also mixed the blots with Victorian fascination with spirits and new media like photography.
Pareidolia is the brain's habit of matching patterns to familiar shapes, especially faces. Folding a wet blot makes it symmetrical, which strengthens the sense of a figure. The viewer's own expectations then fill in the details.
These books show that the brain's habit of seeing faces is old and widespread. They also explain why the Rorschach test was built on a familiar parlour game.
Image: The Public Domain Review
