"My Wife and My Mother-in-Law" is a famous

ambiguous image Ambiguous images or reversible figures are visual forms that create ambiguity by exploiting graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms. These are famous for inducing the ...

, which can be perceived either as a young girl or an old woman (the "

wife A wife (plural, : wives) is a female in a marital relationship. A woman who has separated from her partner continues to be a wife until the marriage is legally Dissolution (law), dissolved with a divorce judgement. On the death of her partner, ...

" and the "

mother-in-law A parent-in-law is a person who has a legal affinity with another by being the parent of the other's spouse. Many cultures and legal systems impose duties and responsibilities on persons connected by this relationship. A person is a child-in-la ...

", respectively).

History

American cartoonist

William Ely Hill W.E. Hill (January 17, 1887 – December 9, 1962) was an American cartoonist and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th-century. He is best known for his weekly full-page illustration series "Among Us Mortals" published in the New York ...

(1887–1962) published "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law" in '' Puck'', an American humour magazine, on 6 November 1915, with the caption "They are both in this picture — Find them". However, the oldest known form of this image is an 1888 German

postcard A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare. There are novelty exceptions, such as wood ...

. In 1930

Edwin Boring Edwin Garrigues (Garry) Boring (23 October 1886 – 1 July 1968) was an American experimental psychologist, Professor of Psychology at Clark University and at Harvard University, who later became one of the first historians of psychology. A ''Rev ...

introduced the figure to psychologists in a paper titled "A new ambiguous figure", and it has since appeared in textbooks and experimental studies.

History

References

See also