ABSTRACT
The pripro, or primary process, scoring system, as it is informally known, was originally developed to provide an operational measure of Sigmund Freud’s concept of primary process thinking and its control. After several decades of clinical and research use, mostly with the Rorschach test-for which it was originally devised-it has become a means of assessing a limited number of important motivational variables as well as a person’s inner (defensive or controlling) reaction to experiencing and communicating about them; an assessment of disordered thinking; a way to measure a person’s capacity for adaptive regression or regression in the service of the ego, an important aspect of creativity; and measures of a variety of defensive and coping strategies. It is thus useful for, but by no means limited to, research or clinical practice with a psychoanalytic orientation.
