Schafer's (1954) "Constants in the Patient's Psychological Position" in Rorschach Testing: Implied Consent & Case Illustration.

Securing a patient's informed consent (American Psychological Association Practice Directorate, 2024) to a psychological evaluation includes, under most conditions, clarifying the client's understanding of the reason for the referral and goals of the evaluation; record keeping and storage; fees and payment; confidentiality, HIPAA, and legal parameters; contact policy; report recipients; feedback procedure; voluntary participation; and freedom to withdraw from the evaluation without penalty. Informed consent is a legal term and differs from implied consent (Nosak et al., 2011), which includes psychological processes outside of conscious awareness or control. Roy Schafer's (1954) description of "constants in the patient's psychological position" appears consistent with the notion of implied consent as applied to a psychodynamic understanding of Rorschach test administration. Schafer's constants are represented by: (a) self-exposure in the absence of trust, (b) loss of control in the interpersonal relationship, (c) the danger of self-confrontation, (d) regressive temptations, and (e) the danger of freedom. In this study, I apply these constants in an integrative way, following test administration stages used by the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer et al., 2011) and the Comprehensive Systemrevised (CS-R; Exner et al., 2022). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]