The Rorschach human experience variable, interpersonal relatedness, and object representation in nonpatients

W. Perry and D. J. Viglione (1991) combined human representational variables from J. E. Exner's (1993) Comprehensive System in their Ego Impairment Index to create the Human Experience Variable (HEV). To validate the HEV, 105 nonpatient women completed the Bell Object Relations Inventory (M. Bell, 1991) and the Rorschach. Their spouses also rated the quality of these women's interpersonal relatedness by completing a modified Bell Object Relations Inventory and the Emotional Maturity Rating Form (H. Bessell, 1984). The HEV was significantly related to the quality of interpersonal relatedness, after considering Rorschach measures of psychopathology and ''nonhuman'' Rorschach images. Results indicate that representations of self and other accessed through the Rorschach account for unique variance in the prediction of the quality of interpersonal relationships, thus supporting the validity of the Rorschach and the concept of object relations.