What the Rorschach Inkblot Test Reveals with Psychoanalyst J. Herman Kleiger

What are we born to do? Should we do what is expected of us or forge our own path in life? Today's special guest, psychologist and psychoanalyst J. Herman Kleiger explores these questions and more in his debut historical novel, The 11th Inkblot. The 11th Inkblot is a “well-written and lovingly embroidered novel...” that is “a spellbindingly measured narrative that entertains and enthralls.” (Kirkus Reviews). It is a novel that explores a mind torn between art and science, the horrors of war and the invention of the Rorschach Test.  The 11th Inkblot invites the reader to become a passenger on a moving interpretive journey of loss, madness, acceptance, and redemption. In this historical fiction, with hints of magical realism, Kleiger treats us to a psychologically-textured coming of age mystery, enmeshed with unexplained family alienation, childhood grief, trauma of war, and a search for connections. The main character's journey takes him to Zurich where he comes under the spell of Swiss Psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach, the man who pioneered the Inkblot test. It is here that art and science meet, where Anton's mother's fortune-telling intersects with the beginnings of a new type psychiatry: The Inkblot (or Rorschach) Test. J. Herman Kleiger was born and raised in Colorado. He graduated from Harvard and the University of Denver, before serving as a psychologist in the Navy.  A clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, his major works include Disordered Thinking and The Rorschach, 1999; Assessing Psychosis, with Ali Khadivi, 2015; and Rorschach Assessment of Psychotic Phenomena, 2017. The 11th Inkblot is Jim’s first novel.