Unlike Freud’s works, Sondi’s approach is based on the theory of systematic attraction and a dimensional personality model. That is, Sondi’s methodology tries to enumerate all human motives, classify and combine them in the framework of a comprehensive theory. Nowadays, all this looks very archaic.
The bottom line is
Sondi’s technique is based on eight drives (motivations, incentives), each of which corresponds to a collective archetype of instinctive action. In general, they are as follows:
- need for conduct (it represents the need for personal or collective love, and is also associated with traits of tenderness, motherhood, passivity, femininity, bisexuality), this requires a sadistic “kick” from the outside, and people of this type are often called hermaphroditic due to the androgynous mentality of their psyche ;
- need for discharge;
- hysterical drive;
- catatonic drive (the need for paranoid drive);
- depressive drive (need for a sadist);
- sadistic drive.
Decryption
The eight drive needs are archetypes and are present in all people in different proportions. A fundamental innovation in the theory of fate analysis is that the difference between mental “illness” and mental “health” is not qualitative, but quantitative. To this, by and large, the description of Sondi's technique comes down.
Attraction
Holistic attraction (Tribe, in Sondi'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 motive, in turn, has a positive and negative aspiration (Triebstrebung), for example, h + (personal tender love) and h- (collective love) or s + (sadism towards another) and s- (masochism).
Compliance Disorders
Four types of drives correspond to the four independent hereditary circles of mental illness established by psychiatric genetics of the time: a drive for schizophobia (containing the needs of paranoid and catatonic drives), a manic-depressive drive, a paroxysmal drive (including the need for epileptic and hysterical drives) and sex drive (including needs for hermaphrodite and sadomasochistic attraction).
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 election technique explains phenomena such as:
- antisocial personality disorder ;
- subtypes of paraphilia;
- histrionic personality disorder (P ++);
- paranoia;
- narcissistic personality disorder;
- affectiveness (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. The main philosophical sources of Sondi's inspiration are Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation and Heidegger's Being and Time. An analysis of the patient’s fate is based on the results of Sondi’s psychological test, medical history and his family background, clarified by studying the family tree. The analysis of fate includes genotropism, a form of deep psychology that had some fame in Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, but was ignored by the academic community.
The initial assumption of the analysis of fate is that a person’s life (fate) unfolds in a series of choices: a person chooses a profession, acquaintances, partners, family, and ultimately his decisions implicitly determine his illness and his death. Sondi’s experience in genealogical research led him to the conviction that these elections could not be regarded only as an individual sovereign decision, but that such elections often followed certain models that existed among his ancestors. Sondi came to the conclusion that some life scenarios are inherited genetically.
Psyche structure
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." Sondi's interpretation of the technique is based largely on an 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 unhealthy or unstable people. This is the case of a psychiatrist with paranoid tendencies to schizophrenia or a lawyer with tendencies for painkillers and litigation. The second example of operotropism is a person who chooses a profession in which he can satisfy socially acceptable needs that, in their original primary form, would constitute a danger to society. This is the case of a pyromaniac-firefighter, a sadist-butcher, coprofile-gastrologist or cleaner. Most jobs can satisfy more than one need for a drive (incentive).
Interpretation of Sondi's results: professions of people in need
The object of work of the professions of people in need of management is the body (own or someone else's). Such people are often called psychological hermaphrodites, since in their psyche both specific male and female specific features are manifested.
Places of work: bathhouse, beach, hairdresser, restaurant, cafe, theater, circus, factory, brothel; basic sensory perceptions - taste and vision; work tools - jewelry, clothes. Professional activities - eyeliner, makeup, needlework, weaving, embroidery, darn. Portraits of Sondi, corresponding to this type of people, are characterized by increased androgyny.
The hermaphrodite type professions are hairdresser, designer, dermatologist, gynecologist, bath attendant, beauty salon and spa worker, fashion illustrator, performer (vaudeville, acrobat, circus artist), singer, ballet dancer, dancer, servant, waiter, hotel manager, pastry chef, cook. The 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 work of sadistic professions are animals, stone, iron, metal, cars, soil, wood.
Working conditions are stall, slaughterhouse, livestock buildings, zoo, arena, mine, forest, mountains, operating room, section.
The main sensory perceptions are deep perception and muscle feeling; working tools are native tools: ax, ax, pickaxe, chisel, hammer, drill, knife, whip. Work activity is a full-blown muscle work.
Sadistic professions: truck driver, farm worker, animal tamer, veterinarian, manicurist, pedicurer, animal slayer, surgical nurse, surgeon, dentist, anatomist, executioner, forestry worker, lumberjack, bricklayer, miner, road worker, sculptor, driver, soldier , wrestler, physical education teacher, gym instructor, massage therapist. Sondi's projective technique defines these people by their 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. Working conditions are enclosed spaces, classrooms, archives, libraries, "ivory towers", monasteries. Sensory perceptions are disabled. Work tools - books. Professional activity - write, read. Sondi's projective methodology defines these people as the main intellectuals.
The work of a schizoform, a catatonoid, is based on the desire for incentives (drives) k +: teacher, soldier, engineer, professor (mainly a linguist or professor of logic, mathematics, physics, philosophy, social sciences). The personality traits found in this group are aristocratic exclusivity, the choice of church professions, systematization, schematization, strict formalism.
Schizoform work, catatonic: aesthetics, art critic, accountant, junior officer, cartographer, technical writer, graphic designer, postal worker, telegraph operator, farmer, forester, lighthouse, security guard, model. Personality traits found in this group: pedantry, accuracy, exemplaryness, lack of humor, silence, harshness, callousness, calmness, hypersensitivity, obstinacy, narrow-mindedness, fanaticism, compulsiveness, automation. Also, these people are characterized by a feeling of omnipotence, autism, inability to be absorbed by others (autopsychological resonance), silence, immobility, tyranny. Sondi's stimulus material is the main catalyst in the process of choosing a profession.
The criminal, or most socially negative, actions of the catatonic type are aversion to work, vagrancy, wandering around the world, burglary. At the other end of the spectrum, the most socially positive professions are a professor, a logician, a philosopher, an aesthetic, a theoretical mathematician, and a physicist.
Paranoid professions
The objects of work of the 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 - the sense of smell and hearing, working tools - these are ideas, creativity, inspiration.
Hebephrenicity
The hebephrenic group belongs to the professions of schizoforms and partially coincides with paranoid professions. Hebephrenic works include a graphologist and an astrologer.
Epileptiform professions
The objects of work of the epileptiform professions are the primordial elements: earth, fire, water, air, spirit. Working conditions: height / depth, rise / fall, waves / swirl movement (rotation in a circle).
The main sensory perceptions are balance and smell; working tools are vehicles: bicycle, electric or ordinary train, boat, car, plane.
Professional activity is a variety of outdoor activities, caring, help, charity for those seeking incentives such as e +.
The best professions for epileptiform are: messenger, driver, sailor, pilot, blacksmith, furnace operator, chimney sweep, fireman, pyrotechnician, baker, soldier (especially flame thrower, explosive unit participant, grenadier, attack aircraft).
Criminal, or the most socially negative, epileptiform actions are kleptomania, pyromania, rape, and the most socially positive are religious professions, a provider of medical services, and forensic pathology.
Hysterical professions
The object of work of hysterical personalities is their own personality. Places of work: auditorium, theater, meeting, street.
Work tools and actions play with oneself, facial expression, voice, color and motion effects.
Hysterical group jobs include: acting (in the roles of women, Amazons and tragic heroines), a political professional, a member of parliament, a bureau or factory head, a car driver, an animal tamer, an artist (vaudeville, acrobat, juggler), speaker, model, athlete (fencing, horseback riding, hunting, wrestling and mountain climbing.
The criminal or most socially negative epileptiform activity is fraud, and the most socially positive is politics, acting.
Other test specifications
Sondi's technique is a projective personality test, like the famous Rorschach test, but with a decisive difference in that it is non-verbal. The test is to show the subject a series of photographs of faces displayed in six groups of eight people each. All 48 objects depicted in the photographs are mentally ill, each group contains a photograph of a person whose personality was classified as homosexual, sadist, epileptic, hysterical, catatonic, paranoid, depressed person and maniac.
Mechanism
The test subject is asked to select the two most attractive and two most disgusting photographs of each group. Presumably, the choice will show the subject the satisfied and unmet needs of the instinctual drive, as well as aspects of the personality of the subject. It is assumed that each photograph is an incentive that can identify the subject's propensity for certain drives, on the basis of which the main personality traits can be formed.
Further decryption
Sondi further broke the results into four different vectors:
- homosexual (hermaphroditic);
- sadistic, epileptic;
- hysterical, catatonic;
- paranoid and depressive / manic.
Sondi believed that people were naturally attracted to personalities similar to them. His theory of genotropism states that there are certain genes that regulate gender selection, and that people with the same gene will look for each other.
To interpret the test results, Sondi 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 with the help of the psychology of fate was operotropism, that is, recognition of the role played by hidden hereditary genes (genotropic factors) in choosing a particular vocation or profession.
Short story
Sondi’s portrait election technique is a psychological test named after Leopold Sondi himself, who worked at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. The test was first published around 1935.
In 1944, Sondi published his work Schicksalsanalyse (Analysis of Fate), or rather, the first of five planned volumes.
In 1960, Sondi began collaborating with psychotherapist Armin Bili in a study of 17 “forms of existence” divided into two main groups: “forms of danger” (Gefährexistenzformen) and “forms of protection” (Schutzexistenzformen). Based on the syndromatics (diagnosis method) published in books 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.
Sondi gathered all the syndromatics into a single table called Testsymptome zur Bestimmung der 17 Existenzformen (“Test Symptoms for Identifying 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, since the analysis of these forms requires deep knowledge and practice in addition to an excellent understanding of the fate analysis technique.
Reviews
Sondi's test, which is highly controversial, is still very popular. Many complain about its inaccuracy, abstractness, arbitrariness, dubious theoretical base. Others praise the focus on unconscious drives and effectiveness in diagnosing accentuations. Which of these parties is right, everyone must decide for himself.