The Rorschach Test applied to ten centenarians of Sardinia

Abstract

This work is aimed at exploring, throught the Rorschach test, the personalità characterstics of ten centenarian women, in an attempt to trace any recurring elements that help to describe their cognitive and affective functioning and psychological effects of decay factors.
The sample – evidently small because of the difficulty in finding subjects of this age even able to undergo the test – is made up of women all born and living always in Sardinia (an Italian region known for the particular longevity of a part of its inhabitants) which was administered the test according to the Italian method “Scuola Romana Rorschach” updated and supplemented by the “Istituto Rorschach Forense”.
There are no exhaustive studies with this technique that investigate this particolar age range, especially for the difficulty of finding numerically representative samples. However there are studies on old age who have tried to isolate psychological factors that explain longevity, and to detect the consistency and availability of their psichic resources, despite the physiological onset of decay cognitive.