A Rorschach test is a psychological assessment where a person looks at inkblots and describes what they see. The test uses ten cards, each showing a symmetrical inkblot that might look like a butterfly, a bat, two people, or anything else your imagination finds in the abstract shapes. There are no right or wrong answers: the idea is that what you see reveals something about how your mind works.

Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach created these inkblots in the 1920s. He discovered that different people see remarkably different things in the same ambiguous image. A psychologist trained in this method listens carefully to what someone describes, how quickly they respond, which details they notice, and whether they see the whole image or focus on small parts.

The test became so famous that people now use “Rorschach test” to describe any situation where the same thing means different things to different people. If two friends watch the same movie and one thinks it's about friendship while the other thinks it's about betrayal, you might say the movie is like a Rorschach test because people interpret it based on their own perspectives and experiences. The inkblots themselves have become iconic: when you see a symmetrical black-and-white splotch, you're probably looking at something inspired by Rorschach’s original cards.