Unlike Freud's work, Szondi's approach is based on systematic attraction theory and a dimensional model of personality. That is, the Szondi technique tries to enumerate all human impulses, classify and combine them within the framework of a comprehensive theory. In our time, all this looks very archaic.
The bottom line is
Sondi's methodology is built on the basis of eight drives (motivations, incentives), each of which corresponds to the collective archetype of instinctive action. Generally speaking, they are:
- need for guidance (represents the need for personal or collective love, and is also associated with traits of tenderness, motherhood, passivity, femininity, bisexuality), such needs a sadistic "kick" from the outside, and people of this type are often called hermaphroditic in the strength of the androgynous warehouse of his psyche;
- need for release;
- hysterical drive;
- catatonic drive (the need for paranoid attraction);
- depressive drive (need for a sadist);
- sadistic drive.
Transcript
The eight drive needs represent archetypes and are present in all people in varying proportions. The fundamental innovation of fate analysis theory is that the difference between mental "disease" and mental "he alth" is not qualitative but quantitative. This, in general, is what the description of Sondi's methodology boils down to.
Attraction
Total attraction (Tribe, in Szondi's own terms), like sexual attraction (S), consists of a pair of opposite needs (Triebbedürfnisse), in this case h (tender love) and s (sadism). Each drive in turn has a positive and a negative drive (Triebstrebung), such as h+ (personal tender love) and h- (collective love) or s+ (sadism towards another) and s- (masochism).
Disorder Correspondences
The four types of drive correspond to the four independent hereditary circles of mental illness established by psychiatric genetics of the time: schizoform drive (containing paranoid and catatonic drive needs), manic-depressive drive, paroxysmal drive (including epileptic and hysterical drive needs) and sex drive (including hermaphrodite and sado-masochistic drive needs).
Sondi's method was also positioned as an innovative addition to psychology. He paved the way for theoretical psychiatry and psychoanalytic anthropology.
Sondi's portrait selection technique explains phenomena such as:
- antisocial personality disorder;
- subtypes of paraphilia;
- histrionic personality disorder (P++);
- paranoia;
- narcissistic personality disorder;
- affectivity (P00);
- panic disorder (P--);
- phobia (P + 0);
- hypochondria (Cm -);
- stupor (-hy);
- somatization and pain disorder;
- neurosis;
- conversion disorder (in hazard classes Pe +, Phy and Schk-);
- dissociative disorder (Sch ± - and C + 0);
- paroxysmal attack (Sch ± -);
- depersonalization disorder and alienation (Sch- ±);
- obsessive-compulsive disorder (Sch ± +).
Fate Analysis
Sondi's interest in determining fate was rooted in his passion for anthropology and philosophy. Szondi's main philosophical sources of inspiration are Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and Heidegger's Being and Time. The analysis of the patient's fate is based on the results of the psychological test of Szondi, the medical history and his family background, ascertained through the study of the family tree. Fate analysis includes genotropism, a form of depth psychology that had some prominence in Europe in the mid-twentieth century but was ignored by the academic community.
The initial assumption of fate analysis is that the life (fate) of a person unfolds in a series of choices: a person chooses a profession, acquaintances, partners, family, and ultimately his decisions implicitly predetermine his illnesses andhis death. Szondi's experience in genealogical research led him to the conviction that these choices should not be seen as solely an individual sovereign decision, but that such choices often follow certain patterns that also existed in his ancestors. Sondi came to the conclusion that some life scripts are inherited genetically.
Structure of the psyche
Sondi, referring to his research, argued that the choice of profession is determined by the dynamics and structure of the psyche - a phenomenon that he called "operotropism". The interpretation of Szondi's technique is based largely on the analysis of this phenomenon.
Of the many possibilities in which operotropism can manifest itself, he gave two examples. A man can choose a profession in which he will deal with mentally ill or unstable people. This is the case of a psychiatrist with paranoid tendencies towards schizoform or a lawyer with tendencies towards painkillers and litigation. The second example of operotropism is a person who chooses a profession in which he can satisfy socially acceptable needs, which in their original primary form would be dangerous to society. This is the case of a pyromaniac fireman, a sadistic butcher, a coprophile gastrologist, or a janitor. Most jobs can satisfy more than one drive need.
Interpretation of Szondi results: Occupations of people in need of guidance
The object of the work of the professions of people in need of guidance is the body(own or someone else's). Such people are often called psychological hermaphrodites, since both specific male and specific female traits are manifested in their psyche.
Places of work: bathhouse, beach, hairdresser, restaurant, cafe, theater, circus, factory, brothel; the main sensory perceptions are taste and vision; working tools - jewelry, clothes. Professional activities - eyeliner, makeup, needlework, weaving, embroidery, darning. Portraits of Szondi, corresponding to this type of people, are characterized by increased androgyny.
Hermaphroditic type professions are hairdresser, designer, dermatologist, gynecologist, bath attendant, beauty and spa worker, fashion illustrator, performer (vaudeville, acrobat, circus performer), singer, ballet dancer, dancer, servant, waiter, hotel manager, confectioner, cook. Criminal or most socially negative actions of the hermaphroditic type are fraud, embezzlement, espionage, prostitution, pimping. The most socially positive professions are gynecologist and sex therapist.
Sadistic professions
The objects of sadistic professions are animals, stone, iron, metal, machines, soil, wood.
Working conditions are stall, slaughterhouse, livestock buildings, zoo, arena, mine, forest, mountains, operating room, section.
Basic sensory perception - depth perception and muscle feeling; working tools are primordial tools: axe, axe, pickaxe, chisel, hammer, drill, knife, whip. Work activity is a full-scale workmuscles.
Sadistic Occupations: Truck Driver, Farm Worker, Animal Tamer, Veterinarian, Manicurist, Pedicurist, Animal Slaughterer, Surgical Nurse, Surgeon, Dentist, Anatomist, Executioner, Forestry Worker, Lumberjack, Bricklayer, Miner, Road Worker, sculptor, chauffeur, soldier, wrestler, PE teacher, gym instructor, massage therapist. Szondi's projective technique identifies these people by sympathy for emphatically masculine faces.
Schizoform (catatonic) professions
The objects of work of the catatonoid professions are reproductive and abstract sciences: logic, mathematics, physics, aesthetics, geography, grammar, etc. The working conditions are enclosed spaces, classrooms, archives, libraries, "ivory towers", monasteries. Sensory perceptions are disabled. Working tools - books. Professional activity - to write, to read. The projective technique of Szondi identifies these people as the main intellectuals.
The work of a schizoform, a catatonoid, is based on the desire for stimuli (drives) k +: teacher, soldier, engineer, professor (mainly a linguist or professor of logic, mathematics, physics, philosophy, social sciences). Personality traits found in this group are aristocratic exclusivity, choice of church professions, systematization, schematization, rigid formalism.
Job schizoform, catatonic: esthetician, art critic, accountant, junior officer, cartographer, technical drafter, graphic designer, postalworker, telegraph operator, farmer, forester, lighthouse, security guard, model. Personality traits found in this group: pedantry, accuracy, exemplary, lack of humor, taciturnity, harshness, callousness, calmness, hypersensitivity, stubbornness, narrow-mindedness, fanaticism, compulsiveness, automation. Also, these people are characterized by a sense of omnipotence, autism, inability to be absorbed by others (autopsychological resonance), silence, immobility, tyranny. The stimulus material of the Szondi methodology is the main catalyst in the process of choosing a profession.
Criminal, or most socially negative, acts of the catatonic type are work aversion, vagrancy, wandering the world, burglary. At the other end of the spectrum, the most socially positive professions are professor, logician, philosopher, aesthetician, theoretical mathematician, physicist.
Paranoid professions
The objects of work of paranoid professions are pragmatic and analytical sciences (psychology, psychiatry, medicine, chemistry), music, mysticism, mythology, occultism.
Jobs: research institutes, laboratories, chemical plants, exotic places, the depths of the mind and the Earth, a psychiatric hospital, a prison. The main sensory perceptions are smell and hearing, working tools are ideas, creativity, inspiration.
Hebephrenia
Hebephrenic group refers to the professions of schizoforms and partially coincides with paranoid professions. Hebephrenic worksinclude a graphologist and an astrologer.
Epileptiform professions
The objects of work of epileptiform professions are the primordial elements: earth, fire, water, air, spirit. Operating Conditions: Height/Depth, Rise/Fall, Waves/Whirlwind (Turn around).
Basic sensory perceptions - balance and smell; the working tools are vehicles: bicycle, electric or conventional train, boat, car, plane.
Professional activities are various mobile activities, care, help, charity for those seeking incentives like e +.
The best professions for epileptiform: messenger, driver, sailor, pilot, blacksmith, furnace operator, chimney sweep, firefighter, pyrotechnician, baker, soldier (especially flamethrower, explosive unit member, grenadier, attack aircraft).
Criminal, or most socially negative, epileptiform acts are kleptomania, pyromania, rape, and most socially positive are religious professions, he althcare provider, forensic pathology.
Hysterical professions
The object of work of hysterical personalities is their own personality. Places of work: auditorium, theater, assembly, street.
Working tools and actions play with self, facial expression, voice, color and motion effects.
Hysteriform group jobs include: acting (playing women, Amazons and tragic heroines), political professional, member of parliament,head of a bureau or factory, car driver, animal tamer, artist (vaudeville, acrobat, juggler), speaker, model, athlete (fencing, horseback riding, hunting, wrestling and mountaineering.
Criminal or most socially negative epileptiform activity - fraud, and the most socially positive - politics, acting.
Other characteristics of the test
Sondi's method is a projective personality test, similar to the famous Rorschach test, but with the crucial difference that it is non-verbal. The test consists of showing the subject a series of photographs of faces displayed in six groups of eight people each. All 48 items shown in the photographs are mentally ill, each group contains a photograph of a person whose personality has been classified as a homosexual, sadist, epileptic, hysteric, catatonic, paranoid, depressed person and maniac.
Mechanism
The subject is asked to choose the two most attractive and the two most disgusting photos of each group. Presumably, the choice will show the subject satisfied and unsatisfied craving needs, as well as aspects of the subject's personality. It is assumed that each photo is a stimulus capable of revealing the subject's propensities for certain drives, on the basis of which the main personality traits can be formed.
Further transcript
Sondi further split the results into four different vectors:
- homosexual (hermaphroditic);
- sadistic, epileptic;
- hysterical, catatonic;
- paranoid and depressive/manic.
Sondi believed that people are naturally attracted to people who are like them. His theory of genotropism states that there are certain genes that regulate the selection of sexes, and that people with the same gene will seek out each other.
To interpret test results, Szondi himself and other researchers have developed many methods. They can be classified as quantitative, qualitative and proportional.
Sondi believed that from a sociological point of view, the most important discovery made using the psychology of fate was operotropism, that is, the recognition of the role played by hidden hereditary genes (genotropic factors) in choosing a particular vocation or profession.
A Brief History
The Szondi Portrait Choice Method is a psychological test named after Leopold Szondi himself, who worked at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. The test was first published around 1935.
In 1944 Szondi published his Schicksalsanalyse ("Analysis of Fate"), the first of five planned volumes to be exact.
In 1960, Szondi began collaborating with psychotherapist Armin Biely in a study of 17 "forms of existence", divided into two main groups: "forms of danger" (Gefährexistenzformen) and "forms of protection" (Schutzexistenzformen). Based on Syndromes (method of diagnosis) published in book 3 and 4 of the Schicksalsanalyse series,one or two (rarely three) forms of existence are found in each test profile. The first results of this study were published in 1963.
Szondi collected all the syndromatics into a single table called Testsymptome zur Bestimmung der 17 Existenzformen ("Test symptoms for the identification of 17 forms of existence"), which was published in Szondiana VI (1966) and in the final second edition of the book (1972). However, one table was not enough, as the analysis of these forms requires deep knowledge and practice in addition to an excellent understanding of the methodology of fate analysis.
Reviews
Sondi's test, with mixed reviews, is still very popular. Many complain about its inaccuracy, abstractness, arbitrariness, dubious theoretical basis. Others are praised for targeting a person's unconscious drives and efficiency in diagnosing accentuations. Which of these sides is right, everyone must decide for himself.
