Disturbance of imagination and symbolization in pervasive developmental disorders: preliminary study utilizing the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

Two clinical cases of children of 6 and 7 years are presented with their respective Rorschach records. The first case had a diagnosis of autism, the second of Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. The modes of elaboration and responses to the ambiguous stimuli of the Rorschach test were compared with the clinical symptoms of the two subjects, which are centered on the two opposite poles of absence of imagination in the first case and distortion of the imaginative processes in the second.