SOME PROBLEMS RELATING TO RESEARCH ON THE ROSENZWEIG PICTURE-FRUSTRATION STUDY.

This article presents the author's comments on the Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study. The Picture-Frustration (P-F) Study originated largely from the need for a tool to be used in exploring certain concepts of frustration theory. The present survey of research related to the P-F Study is accordingly appropriate to its original intent. While one group of these reports emphasizes the experimental or clinical validation of the P-F, the other stresses the association of the method with ulterior research objectives ranging from problems of personality diagnosis to those of personnel selection. The point was made that the P-F Study is intended to disclose individual dynamics rather than to confirm psychiatric diagnosis in Kraepelmian or other statistical terms. The relationship between a particular score and pattern of scores in the Study, on the one hand, and a psychiatric diagnosis or label, on the other, might therefore be difficult to demonstrate and perhaps even be irrelevant. While a very large group of patients of a designated psychiatric category might be expected to have certain psychodynamic characteristics in common, in any small sample individual variations in dynamics could easily predominate and tend to negate differential diagnosis by means of the P-F.