DR.JOHN'S CASE NOTES : THE RORSCHACH SYNDROME

Once this particular syndrome presents itself , bridge players immediately develop the disturbing habit of complaining about others sitting at their table , even though they may be innocent of alleged offensive behaviour or making rude remarks.
Victims of the Rorschach Syndrome lose the ability to see things as they really are. They develop a nasty habit of providing a completely different , albeit incorrect , version of an incident , with a view to getting others into serious trouble. These factual distortions , gross exaggerations and lies are all based on what they think they saw and heard , as opposed to what actually took place.
If the syndrome is present in more than one witness to an incident , then each complaint which comes will be substantially different , in that various allegations will be made on an alternative interpretations of the same incident , reflecting a completely different set of lies. When multiple complaint letters come in about alleged misconduct , there is never a consensus as to what wrongdoing has taken place because imagination has taken over from accurate memory and recall of the facts.
One example of the syndrome at work was when a player , who simply moved a bridgemate across a table for others to see , found himself being accused of assault . Two of players at the table had already been diagnosed as acute sufferers , and so it came as no surprise when one alleged that the bridgemate had been thrown at him with considerable force , while the other alleged that it had been used like a hand-held brick to flatten his partner's nose.  
Psychoanalysts the world over have for years established bridge players as being severely acute sufferers , when compared to any other group of people. When players at Nottingham BC were asked to stare at a sheet of paper with a smudged ink blot in the middle , a multitude of answers came back as to what image it depicted. Those free of the syndrome gave answers which were innocent and had much in common. The Rorschach sufferers came back with their unique  lurid , violent  and sexually explicit interpretations ,  reflecting in the process the darker side of their personalities,  and their extremely warped and twisted imaginations. 
This recent bit of research , carried out by the Nottingham University Psychology Department  revealed two things : (i) the high proportion of bridge club members with this disturbing syndrome , and (ii ) how the answers given by the syndrome victims revealed so much more about their inner demons , than any deep or probing interview could possibly achieve.