The RAH Test Is Not a Psychological Assessment. Is a Journey into the Colours of Memory

There is something profoundly human in the way a colour can fling open a door to the past. A dazzling yellow, a soft blue, a pulsing red. These are not merely shades but fragments of ourselves, woven into moments that shaped us.

This is the intuition from which the RAH Test was born. It is a project that does not aspire to classify us but to offer a map to rediscover what makes us feel good. Since the platform opened to a broader audience, I have noticed a shift. Today, those who approach it do so with the curiosity of someone discovering a newly published book, without necessarily knowing everything I had shared before on my social channels. Many dive straight into the test and only afterward, with a mix of wonder and questions, write to me to understand what exactly they have in their hands.

One of them, an English artist, reached out shortly after the launch. His words were an anthem of enthusiasm."I found the entire process of generating the result incredibly intuitive and designed with great sensitivity. What struck me most was the perfect balance. Ephemeral yet profound, aesthetically refined yet conceptually rigorous. I can clearly see the value it can offer both artists and clients."

Thank you, Stephen, for capturing the essence of RAH.

But then he did something that left me astonished. He took the HEX codes of his RAH colours, those numbers that translate his personal shades, and fed them into ChatGPT, asking for a psychological analysis of the data.

I wondered how such an intimate journey could be reduced to an algorithmic reading built on standardized theories. This is not the spirit of RAH, nor is it its purpose.

To understand its nature, we need to take a step back and look at another, far more famous test. Max Lüscher, the Swiss psychologist who turned colour into a reading of the soul. His test, with sixty-four shades and a series of choices and classifications, is a complex architecture capable of capturing the emotional state of the participant, from conscious movements to the depths of the unconscious. It is a clinical instrument, even used in military contexts to assess individuals taking on delicate roles: cadets, co-pilots, personnel assigned to missions abroad.

Years ago, I attended a course to learn how to administer it, and I was fascinated. Choosing a colour in that context felt like confessing a feeling, an instant snapshot of the mood of the moment. But the RAH Test, although it shares with Lüscher the use of colour, follows a different path. It is closer to the poetry of memory than to diagnosis.

RAH does not merely capture an instant. Rooted in memories and long-term emotional memory, it remains stable over time. Its questions, an interplay of intuitions and provocations, guide the person completing it to explore the bond between colour and emotion, digging into moments that left a mark. It is not a psychological investigation. It is an invitation to rediscover what once made us vibrate.

Its foundations rest on four neuroscientific pillars. The Predictive Brain Paradigm explains how the brain anticipates and interprets the world. Top-Down Sensory Processing gives priority to personal experience in perceiving colours. The Approach-Avoidance Motivational System regulates our emotional reactions. Implicit Associations reveal the unconscious links a colour can evoke. Together, these theories turn RAH into a compass to navigate your inner landscape.

Imagine a yellow. For someone, it is the reflection of a distant summer, a float bobbing on the sea, the voice of a mother singing a lullaby. For another, it is an unsettling shadow, the colour of a car racing through a traumatic memory. These flashes, these entanglements of colour and emotion, arise by chance in moments we do not choose but that mark us forever.

RAH does not pretend to tell us who we are or to classify us as healthy or fragile. It offers a personal palette, as unique as a fingerprint, that can be reintegrated into daily life through a cushion, a wall, or a painting, to rekindle the neural circuits linked to positive experiences. It is like leafing through an album of invisible photographs where every colour is a chapter of our story.

In an era where we seek immediate, often pre-packaged answers, RAH invites us to ask a question that echoes the reflections of Proust or the insights of Bachelard. What makes me feel alive?

It is not a diagnosis but a dialogue with ourselves. Not a definition but an invitation to cultivate what, deep down, we know belongs to us. Perhaps in this simple gesture, choosing a colour and remembering a moment, there is a small act of resistance. Resistance against the haste to label ourselves, against the urgency to simplify who we are. Instead, there is the possibility to inhabit our inner world with awareness.