Leopold Szondi

Leopold Szondi [ ˈlɛopold ˈsondi ] Hungarian Lipót Szondi , actually Leopold Sonnenschein (born March 11, 1893 in Nyitra , Austria-Hungary ; † January 24, 1986 in Küsnacht , Switzerland ) was a Hungarian-Swiss doctor , endocrinologist , psychiatrist , curative teacher and depth psychologist . Szondi is the founder of fate analysis, researcher of genotropism and the familial unconscious.

Life

Leopold Szondi was born Leopold Sonnenschein on March 11, 1893 in the former Hungarian city of Nyitra. He was the second youngest of nine children from the second marriage of his father Abraham Sonnenschein to Rézi Kohn. Forced by existential poverty, the Sonnenschein family moved from Nyitra to Budapest in 1898 because sons and daughters had found work there and could support the family. Father Abraham Sonnenschein was a shoe craftsman. He was basically a Jewish scholar and devoted himself entirely to the study of the Torah , Talmudic and Hasidic scriptures. Szondi expressed the conviction that he had been shaped into a religious person by his father. Nothing is known of the mother, Rézi Kohn, apart from the fact that she came from near Nyitra. In 1911, 18-year-old Lipót Sonnenschein graduated from high school. His father died in the same year.

The eighteen-year-old had his previous family name, Sonnenschein, renamed “Szondi” . Lipót Szondi began studying medicine in Budapest. During the First World War , his studies were repeatedly interrupted between 1914 and 1918 by the medical service on the front line of the war.

After completing his medical degree, Szondi was a research assistant to Professor Pál Ranschburg from 1919 to 1926 , an experimental psychologist, doctor and curative teacher. 1927–1941 Szondi worked as a professor and head of the Royal Hungarian State Curative Education Research Laboratory for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy at the College of Curative Education in Budapest. On the basis of extensive family research and genetic studies, he developed a new theory of illness and partner choice and his own instinctual psychology. In 1926 he married Lili (Ilona) Radványi (1902–1986). In 1928 the daughter Vera was born, in 1929 the son Peter.

In 1941, due to anti-Jewish professional bans, Szondi lost his state posts and all titles in teaching and research. Despite the increasing terror directed against Jews, Szondi continued to work undeterred in Budapest on the development of his instinctual psychology. In secret, students and non-Jewish employees hectographed his drive diagnostic work, which as a Jew he was no longer allowed to present in public lectures. The Nazi terror had a more and more decisive impact on the everyday life of the Szondi family. The family had to wear the Star of David and move into a so-called " Jewish house ". It was precisely during this inhumane time that Szondi dealt scientifically with the relationship between the ego and the drives. He was also interested in the relationship between the self and the spirit, between instincts and humanism. Finally, Szondi occupied himself with the education of the instincts. He was able to save the manuscript of his basic work “Analysis of Fate” before he was deported to Switzerland.

In June 1944, Szondi was offered a "voluntary deportation" to Israel. This offer was based on a money trade between representatives of the Jewish aid organization Waadah (especially Rudolf Kasztner , Joel Brand and Andreas Biss) and representatives of Heinrich Himmler . On June 29, 1944, the Szondi family and 1683 other “exchange Jews” were deported from Budapest via Vienna to Bergen-Belsen to the “Hungarian camp” opened on June 8, 1944. Ten relatives of Leopold Szondi, who had to stay behind in Hungary, were victims of the Nazi machinery of extermination and persecution in the following months. Szondi founded a "humanist group" in the Bergen camp. In the darkened camp barracks he presented his instinctual understanding of the human and inhumane in humans.

Negotiations and interventions from abroad meant that on December 6, 1944, the Szondi family was allowed to travel to Switzerland with 1,365 people. They set foot on Swiss soil on December 7, 1944. In the refugee camp in Caux, Lili Szondi described the daily routine in the Bergen-Belsen camp. As a refugee in Caux, Leopold Szondi asked himself how humanism could be built into society as a corrective to the inhuman. Under the title Education and Treatment of the Instincts (1946) he had a pedagogical and therapeutic path in mind, which he described as the “path of becoming human”. On the way to the highest instinctual fate, called “humanity”, people go through - paired with backward steps - various stages of the incarnation.

From 1946 to 1984, Szondi lived in Zurich. In 1959 he received Swiss citizenship. Thanks to a generous bequest , the teaching and research institute for general depth psychology and especially destiny psychology was opened in Zurich in 1970, not far from the Szondi family's apartment. The legacy was converted into a non-profit foundation. For his scientific achievements, Szondi received honorary doctorates, in 1970 from the University of Leuven in Belgium, in 1979 from the University of Paris VII.

On November 9, 1971, their son Peter Szondi passed away in Berlin . From 1965 he was full professor for general and comparative literature at the Free University of Berlin and was about to take over the chair for comparative literature at the University of Zurich. Peter Szondi had chosen to commit suicide in Berlin's Halensee , like his friend, the writer and poet Paul Celan in the water of the Seine a year earlier . In 1978, daughter and doctor Vera Szondi died in Zurich of an endocrine disorder. Szondi worked at his teaching and research institute from 1971 to 1983. Leopold Szondi passed away on January 24, 1986 at the age of 93. Shortly afterwards, on August 18 of the same year, his wife, Lili Szondi-Radványi, aged 84, died. They found their final resting place in the Fluntern cemetery in Zurich . 

On April 6, 2005 the City Council of Zurich decided to name the footpath from Zürichbergstrasse to Orellistrasse as "Szondiweg". The inscription on the sign commemorates “Leopold Szondi (1893-1986) psychiatrist, founder of fate analysis and the Institute for Destiny Psychology”, as well as “Peter Szondi (1929-1971) literary scholar”.

plant

Genotropism

By publishing the Analysis of Marriages - An attempt at a theory of choice in love , Leopold Szondi introduced a new theory of human choices in 1937: the choice of partners, friends, occupation, illness and the way of death. In his further work on election theory, Szondi moved the term “genotropism” into the center. He understands genotropism as a force emanating from genes that draws people with the same or related genetic makeup to one another and maintains their mutual bond in love and friendship. People whose genes contain identical or related genes and who therefore feel attracted to one another are called “gene relatives”. With the release of his choice theory Szondi presented a new scientific paradigm against which comprises forming a separate discipline within depth psychology , namely the fate analysis should usher ( "fate analysis"). In 1937 Szondi sent his Analysis of Marriages to Sigmund Freud in Vienna, the attentive guardian of the psychoanalytic theory of human love choices. Szondi regarded the psychoanalytic insights into the dynamics of human love choices as fundamentally correct, but as epiphenomena of the genotropism postulated by him. In his written answer, Sigmund Freud admitted, albeit with some skepticism and distancing on the subject, that the arguments put forward by Szondi had a possible, albeit marginal, influence.

Family unconscious

From 1942 onwards, Szondi equated the unconscious human plan of fate with the concept of the "familial unconscious" (Hungarian: családi tudattalan). By assigning the unconscious, genetically anchored human fate to the “familial unconscious”, he succeeded in matching the analysis of fate to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud with its “personal unconscious” and to the analytical psychology of the Zurich researcher Carl Gustav Jung with its “collective unconscious” to be connected. The concept of the familial unconscious is linked to the therapeutic concern of “steerable fatalism ”. This controllability is made possible by the awareness of the unconscious plans for fate and the search for leeway within which the individual fate can be freely shaped.

Szondi test

Between 1937 and 1939, the theory of human choice led Szondi to develop the “Geno-Test”, later better known under the name “Experimental Drive Diagnostics” (1947) or “ Szondi Test ”. During the test, people are invited to choose the two most likeable and the two most unsympathetic from a total of 48 images of “drive-sick” people. After many years of experimentation, Szondi was convinced that face portraits of people who have extreme drive dynamics in certain drive areas exert a strong stimulus on genetically related, healthy or sick test persons and decisively influence the choice of images.

Forced and Freedom Fate

From 1946 Szondi further developed his drive system and experimental drive diagnostics. In 1954 he differentiated his previous concept of fate, which was fundamental in Budapest. The new version of the term “fate” reflects more appropriately the bio-psycho-social and spiritual wholeness of the human being. Szondi now differentiates between “compulsory” and “freedom”. Acting out of distracted drive and affect destinies or of internalized frozen social norms and convictions leads to an obsessional fate. In addition, people fall into an obsessional fate when they gather and concentrate their claims to being (“power to be”) entirely on their own person, on their self. Even with the one-sided transfer of one's own claim to being to other people, the individual suffers an obsessional fate. Szondi saw the key to the fate of freedom in man's innate ability to participate in a spiritual, transpersonal dimension of being (“spirit”). On the basis of his psychotherapeutic and historical experiences, he came to the conclusion that ultimately only a spiritual, transpersonal object of participation is beneficial for people. Only spiritual instances and meaningful human ideas with a high integrative, polarity-bridging capacity, endure the human power of being projected onto them in the long run.

Ego-analysis

In 1956 the main work was written, the ego-analysis . There are new approaches to understanding psychotherapeutically relevant phenomena, e.g. B. the sleep dream, the madness and forms of transference based on the need for participation and oneness. Szondi also describes the so-called “Pontifex-Ich” (translated as “Bridge Builder”), a person with high integrative, participatory and transcendent abilities. On the way to becoming a person, consciousness changes from a dualizing either / or attitude to an as well as orientation that avoids one-sided and dogmatizing identifications with school and doctrinal opinions or attitudes. A person who at least temporarily reaches the integrative maturity of a pontifical ego can endure the constant journey between psychological poles and transcends psychological polarities into a bridging unity. According to Szondi, the freedom experienced by transcending and bridging polarities and dualisms is the epitome of the fate of freedom and humanity.

Drive system of destiny psychology

In the work Ich-Analyze , the drive system developed in Budapest unfolds into a complex structural scheme of human drive life .

1. . The sex drive consists in the interaction of the needs for sensual and sublimated tenderness as well as for activity and devotion.
2. . The instinct for surprise is shaped by the needs and strivings of the human emotional life, which manifest themselves as impulsiveness, anger, fear and a sense of justice as well as shame and the urge to gain recognition.
3. . The ego drive contains the two needs for being and having, as well as the striving for ego expansion (inflation), participation (participation), for emotional incorporation (introjection) and negation (negation).
4. . The contact instinct encompasses the needs and strivings for attachment, detachment, change and perseverance.

For one drive there is a total of 16, for all four drives a total of 64 drive constellations. According to Szondi, they form the genetically anchored building blocks of human plans for fate and forms of existence, which are visualized and interpretable in the drive profiles of experimental drive diagnostics. In and between the four drives there is a dialectical interplay of drive factors and drive tendencies. To each visibly superficial of a person, the “fore-walker”, there is polar an invisible background, the “rear-walker”. Front and rear as aspects of the mental wholeness are inseparable. Szondi brings a differentiated systematics of suffering life fates in connection with splitting off and blocking of ego functions . Mental health arises through mutual control and cooperation of instinctual needs.

Aggression theory

The drive system of fate analysis, which is aligned with four areas of life, forms the starting point for a differentiated typology of aggressive behavior . Szondi differentiates between four qualities of human aggression, which from an instinctual point of view can be traced back to specific energy sources:

1. . The lust-seeking aggression manifests itself as sexual sadism , masochism and sadomasochism .
2. . The affect-related , “ kainitic ” aggression feeds on affect energies and manifests itself in attack-like affect actions , which are usually followed by a phase of reparation.
3. . The ego-like aggression that devalues ​​and destroys everything and everyone is expressed in the various forms of negativism and ideologically motivated annihilation.
4. . The aggression of frustration due to being shortened and not accepted can lead, for example, to terrorist and extremist desperate and liberation actions by members of oppressed societies.

Destiny Therapy

It was not until 1956 that Szondi appeared as the founder of his own fate-analytical psychotherapy. In 1963 he published a broad volume of methods and forms of intervention in the textbook “Fateful Analysis Therapy”, some of which he had already practiced in Budapest. Destiny therapy seems appropriate for people who feel compelled to repeat the life patterns of ancestors and ancestors without being asked. In destiny therapy it is therefore important to ask yourself the following questions:

What is my family's compulsive fate?

• What do I want to continue from the family legacy and from the concerns of my family ("family identification")?
• What do I definitely not want to pass on ("family negation")?
• What do I want to change from the one-sidedness and exaggerations in my family?
• How do I want to shape my individual life in a self-determined manner in the context of family inheritance (fate of choice)?

Legacy of the history of science

With the analysis of fate, Szondi supplemented the already established depth psychology schools of Sigmund Freud and CG Jung with a psychobiological dimension. With psychobiology he tried to build a bridge between the humanities and the natural sciences within depth psychology . Szondi's importance in the history of ideas lies in innovative contributions to various areas of science, namely human genetics , psychiatry , curative education , depth psychology , psychotherapy , education and religious psychology .

genetics

The genetic analysis of psychiatric diseases was Szondi's main field of work in his laboratory for pathology and therapy in Budapest in the 1930s . He was in scientific exchange with genetic researchers such as Ernst Rüdin , Bruno Schulz and others. Using a constitutional analytical approach (until 1937), Szondi asked himself the question of the “disease choice” of humans. Inheritance studies have shown two forms of neurasthenia . Szondi ordered the apathetic neurasthenia the schizophrenic , the irritative neurasthenia the circular to Erbboden. Investigations into the inheritance of stuttering played a major role in the research work. Szondi succeeded in obtaining genetic evidence of a close hereditary biological connection between the paroxysmal - vasomotor reaction forms of stuttering , epilepsy , migraines , hysteria and certain forms of crime. Szondi determined the inheritance of stuttering as dimer (two-factorial) recessive . In connection with hereditary research into language disorders, he found a recessive inheritance to be involved in the development of the cleft palate .

Gametal genotropism

According to Szondi (1944, 306), the attraction of genetically related people is ultimately rooted in the endeavor of individual genes to assert themselves in competition with other genes and to influence family life patterns across generations. People with identical genes choose and support each other in love and friendship to encourage the spread of common genes. People subconsciously become fellow players in genes.

The genotropische thinking Szondi understands the human being as Genwesen, leaving the destiny of man long before conception and birth start. Future parents recognize and unconsciously find each other as genetic relatives, because the same genes inherent in the sex cells ( gametes ) of both parents cause mutual attraction. That is why Szondi (1944, 306, 1948, 412) speaks of the “parent choice” of genes and of “gametal genotropism”. According to Szondi, the fate-defining choices in occupation, disease and type of death are further stages in a person's “genetic timetable”. When asked how people and their genes manage to identify gene relatives , Szondi was of the opinion that the genetic relationship is reflected in facial expression and therefore gene relatives recognize each other primarily through physiognomy.

Genotropism and Evolutionary Psychology

It was only with the sociobiology of Edward Osborne Wilson in the 1970s that a direction of science appeared whose perspective makes the genotropism hypothesis appear meaningful outside of depth psychology. In terms of the history of science, Szondi is one of the radical thought leaders in modern sociobiology. The now almost forgotten statements by Szondi (1944, 1949) about the “genetic timetable” of humans, which begins even before conception, as well as the conception of the struggle and contest between genes, come astonishingly close to analogies and linguistic figures of the sociobiologist Richard Dawkins . Szondi understood, similar to sociobiology and evolutionary psychology decades later, the life of the individual human being in an ultimate causal, evolutionary sense: humans are players in the reproductive self-interest of genes. According to Szondi it is not the individual who chooses, but rather the latent genes in him (1944, 307f. 1949). Their ultimate goal is to compete with other genes for reproductive self-interest and to stay in the gene pool across generations.

God genes

With the views expressed in the thirties and forties about the existence of "gods genes" (Bürgi-Meyer, 2000, 78), Szondi anticipated the assumption of a "god genes" advocated by Dean Hamer (2004) in the history of ideas. According to Szondi, god's genes in the genes of particularly god-loving and religiously gifted people also obey the evolutionary laws of genotropism. God's genes cause a mutual (genotropic) attraction, affinity and affection for religious people, groups, professions, interests and ideals.

psychiatry

Szondi began his constitutional analysis work in 1919 under the direction of Pál Ranschburg . He examined people with developmental impairments in intelligence and those skills that contribute to the level of intelligence, such as cognition, language, motor and social skills. Szondi came to the realization that the markedly less gifted as well as the geniuses and the highly gifted have the same biology of the 'extreme variants' with their characteristic abundance of somatopathological and psychopathological findings. In addition to the intelligence quotient (IQ), he developed a biological deviation quotient (BAQ) to calculate the mean value of the extreme characteristics of a group or a person. By determining the alimentary glycemic reaction (sugar stress test), Szondi and colleagues succeeded in differentiating between two behavioral types of personality with intellectual disabilities , the ' apathetic ' and the 'excitable'. The two forms of oligophrenia distinguished by Szondi are characterized by two polar opposing biological and behavioral organizations. He also recognized that apathetic less gifted people should be taught and encouraged using other curative educational methods than excitable ones. Stimulating methods, as far as possible stimulating all sensory modalities, suitable for the apathetic group, would be contraindicated for the irritating group. Szondi also divided the clinical picture of neurasthenia into two syndromes, the "apathic" and "irritative" (excitable). Due to the new subdivision, he was the first to recognize that bromine therapy (anti-epileptic), which was widely used at the time, was strictly contraindicated for the apathetic special form of neurasthenia.

This constitution-analytical research finally led to the fate-analytical creative phase (1937).

Curative education

In Budapest from 1927 to 1941, Szondi carried out holistic curative education as head physician of the Royal Hungarian State Curative Education Laboratory for Pathology and Therapy, in which pedagogues, psychologists, biologists, physicians and clergy worked closely together. For mentally disturbed children and adolescents, he developed a multi-dimensional constitutional, quantitative and qualitative diagnosis. This included the analysis of the appearance and the metrics of growth, the study of maturity, the biological forms of reaction and the somatic and psychological constitution . In addition, there were extensive hereditary and genealogical investigations as well as personality and character analysis . At the 5th Congress for Curative Education in Cologne in 1930, Szondi appeared before the international public for the first time and explained the work and objectives of his curative education research laboratory.

Under Szondi's leadership, numerous employees organized themselves as “soul supports” for young criminals and those who have been released from prison. Szondi recognized that educational efforts were particularly fruitful when the latent instinctual structures of the educator and those cared for corresponded to one another through genetic relationships. Szondi placed the selection of suitable educators and the formation of educational groups and classes on an instinctual basis.

At the 1st International Congress for Curative Education in Geneva, Szondi presented his healing method of "drive transformation" in 1939. For the protection of the community and for the well-being of the children, dangerous instinctual claims were transformed into their forms of expression, i.e. H. socialized. Szondi developed a catalog of professional activities that should be suitable for the socialization of certain instinctual tendencies.

General depth psychology

A central concern in “Ich-Analyze” (1956) was to integrate the various schools and directions in depth psychology into a “general depth psychology” without blurring the differences between the schools of thought. Szondi therefore wanted a multidimensional training at his training institute in Zurich (from 1970), in which representatives of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology according to CG Jung and fate analysts work together integratively. He wanted to keep the variety of psychotherapeutic perspectives as manifestations of the one, but polyglot unconscious. Szondi understood the individual directions of depth psychology as actual language schools that have specialized in the various forms of expression and communication of the human soul. So he assigned the language of symptoms to psychoanalysis, the language of symbols to analytical psychology and the language of choice to analysis of fate. Szondi left it to future research to discover other “language areas” of the unconscious.

Drive psychological differentiations

The instinctual instinctual system proved to be extremely integrative. It contains the four psychiatric hereditary circles of the thirties and forties, reinterpreted by Szondi as circles of fate:

• the hereditary circle of sexual deviations ( sexual orientation ), sex drive
• the epileptiform-paroxysmal inheritance ( epilepsy , hysteria ), paroxysmal instinct
• the schizoform inheritance ( schizophrenia ), ego instinct
• the circular, manic-depressive inheritance ( mania , depression ), contact instinct .

Szondi was able to fully incorporate instinct theory, needs psychology, and disease theory into psychoanalysis. In addition, he introduced drive psychological differentiations which, compared to the drive system of early psychoanalysis, proved to be more differentiated and more appropriate to therapeutic practice. In addition to libidinal-sexual forms of attachment based on the sex drive, Szondi distinguished independent participatory, fusing forms of attachment associated with the ego drive. He also assigned new forms of relationship to the independent contact drive, which are shaped by the need for acceptance, support, security and being nourished.

In addition to the libidinal transference relationships described by Sigmund Freud, several non-libidinal transference relationships also exist in Szondi's conception. Such concepts were only described decades later in psychoanalytic self-psychologies and theories as self-object transfers according to Heinz Kohut and in object relationship theory . The design of an independent contact drive comes close to the attachment theory developed much later by John Bowlby . Szondi and Bowlby also took behavioral research into account in their investigations and considerations on attachment behavior .

Multi-generation perspective

The central starting point of Fate Analysis Therapy (1963) is the multi-generational perspective. The familial unconscious forms an invisible bond that connects all family members vertically, across generations, to the "electrical circuit of the ancestors". But it also connects the living members of a family horizontally. Due to the vertical and horizontal connections, the family members form an affective network of high levels. The fate analysis does not regard the individual as an isolated individual, but rather embedded in the visible and invisible context of family of origin and kinship that accompanies the whole life. In Szondi's multi-generational perspective, entanglements, expectations, earnings, debts, loyalty obligations, but also resources and strengths can be identified that stretch across generations.

Family coevolution

With regard to family psychology, Szondi understood the individual as the bearer and participant of a family coevolution, as the administrator of a cross-generational inheritance of ideas (“mental fate”). We are responsible for its preservation, development and transmission. A conscious assumption of this responsibility, chosen by the self, conveys a sense of life, family identity and solidarity. On the one hand, Szondi spoke of a consciously responsible “family identification” (“fate of freedom”). If, on the other hand, family tasks and expectations are accepted unconsciously and acted out under blind compulsion, they hinder the individual's self-realization and self-development. The member succumbs to the “familial repetition compulsion” and a “familial obsessional fate”, which goes hand in hand with the experience of not leading his own life.

Cain - Abel - Moses

Szondi's view of reality is shaped by the experience that in every complementary pair of opposites (polarity) the poles are dynamically and inseparably related to one another and form a unity. So it is important not to strive for the good one-sidedly and to fight the bad, but rather to perceive the good and the bad as two sides of one's own wholeness and to keep them in a dynamic balance. To understand the dynamics of human affect, Szondi attached central importance to the “Cain” and “Abel” polarity. The human task of recognizing and living Cain and Abel as complementary opposites (polarities) is symbolically expressed in the figure of integration, Moses . Outstanding human achievements such as conscience and ethics are formed in the figure of "Moses" through the dialectical interaction of Cain and Abel .

Pontifex I.

In his analysis of the ego (1956), Szondi describes the path taken by humans to become a person, to become “homo humanus”. Szondi started from the assumption that human needs for transcendence and mystical participation are independent . With the conceptions of a “fourth dimension of being” and the pontifical ego, Szondi became a pioneer in “ transpersonal psychology ”. With the attainment of a pontifex ego, an integrated person, according to Szondi, brings together the two divided consciousness orientations of this and otherworldly, which separately only suffice to capture “half-worlds”. The pontiff ego integrates and bridges all structures of consciousness and their assumptions about reality. On his path of becoming “human and person”, man reaches the highest level of being human and freedom when he has temporarily established the “metaphysical” I, the “pontiff I” (literally: bridging I).

In describing the psychological experiences and possibilities of people who have reached the level of the pontifical ego, Szondi resorted to the Atman teaching ( Brahman ) of the Hindu Upanishads , which he conveyed through translations and interpretations by Paul Deussen (1898, 1921) and Heinrich Gomperz (1925) have been. Just as Atman was celebrated as a “bridge” over all opposites, as the “inner guide” of the human being, so the integrated human being with his pontifical ego becomes the self-determining guide of his fate of freedom and the bridging of opposites and polarities. In the Atman all opposites are canceled out, because Atman is "neither that - nor that". It goes beyond all terms and definitions. With the achieved pontiff ego like Atman, man moves beyond opposites and poles, he is always on the move in between. For Szondi, the temporary abolition and bridging of opposites is the epitome of the human fate of freedom.

Claim of fate diagnostics

With fate diagnostics, also known as “experimental drive diagnostics” or “Szondi test” (1947, 1960, 1972), Szondi has linked expectations and goals that go far beyond what is expected of a personality test and instrument for psychological diagnostics was considered redeemable. Rather, Leopold Szondi connects with experimental drive diagnostics views and claims that are inherent in “intuitive divination methods ” in the sense of CG Jung . Szondi makes the immodest claim to penetrate with his fate diagnosis to the genetic biological roots that guide the course of human life. The test profile is the image of a plan of fate, which, like an invisible script, shapes a person's life from birth to death into a figure of fate (Szondi 1937, 2, 76; 1944, 1, 3, 9; 1948, 23, 30, 403) . Szondi (1954, 18) equates the plan of fate with the “familial unconscious”. The diagnosis of fate claims to be able to make the fate-determining life patterns of the ancestors visible. Past, present and future possible fate of individuals, peoples and cultures should find their expression in the test profiles (Szondi 1954; 1972, 68, 208f, 399). Leopold Szondi (1960) saw his fate diagnostics, at least in the longer term, satisfying the claim of implementing Schiller's idea of ​​a Linnaeus system of determination ( Carl von Linné ) for people: people should be measured and located in the factorial coordinate system of fate diagnostics.

Szondi regarded his experimental drive diagnostics as a further research tool in the following areas: psychotherapy (diagnostics and prognostics), pedagogy, curative education, ethics and morals, religious studies, criminology and forensic psychiatry, psychosomatics, career counseling, developmental psychology, ethnology, couple counseling, psychopharmacology and human genetics.

Reality view of fate diagnostics

Szondi (1972, 68, 209, 399; 1954) understands human life essentially as constant change, as becoming, constantly flowing, as cycle and dynamic. Fate, a person's life course, is the story of his changes (Szondi 1947, 211–219; 1952, 29f; 1954, 32; 1956; 152f). The dynamic of change stems from the dialectical interplay of complementary polarities. If one polarity pole grows too much proportionally to the other, it changes into the opposite pole. For Szondi, the cycle of polarities becomes an expression of the relative value of all things. It is important not to strive for good one-sidedly and to drive away evil, but to perceive both as two sides of one's own wholeness and to keep them in a dynamic balance (Szondi, 1969; 1972, 209, 231; 1973). The doctrine of polarity results in an understanding of health and illness that is important for fate diagnosis. To be healthy means to bring mental dualities together in complementary opposing relationships (polarities) and to endure their relative equilibrium. If a person cannot bear the complementary interplay of Poles, he transforms the Poles into dualistic opposites, suffers and falls ill.

Original language of fate diagnosis

Szondi saw in experimental drive diagnostics (1947, 1960, 1972) incomparably more than a projective personality test . Proof is his equation of the structural elements of the diagnosis of fate with a "original language". Following the deliberations of the linguist Carl Abel, Szondi (1952, 155) considered the language of choice of images and logging of fate diagnostics as an archaic form of an "original language". According to Szondi, an “original language” is characterized by the fact that, in a suitable form, “opposites are tied together to form a unity, a whole.” “Original languages” are characterized by “words with polar opposite meanings” or by compounds, “in which two words of one-sided but contradicting meaning are combined ”(Szondi 1952, 154f). In the original language used to diagnose fate, eight factorial polarities form the "original words" with polar opposite meanings.

According to Szondi, the “original profile” of fate diagnosis expresses both the wholeness of the soul in the prepersonal “genetic life” before the reduction division and in the prenatal, bisexual embryo stage. The original profile also finally represents the full and whole being of "homo humanus", the perfected figure of the human being. Polarities are born from the unity and include the concept of wholeness. In the original profile, all original polarities coincide indiscriminately. The original profile becomes the symbol of the mystical " Coincidentia oppositorum " ( Nikolaus von Kues ). In his view of the becoming person and human being, Szondi sketches how the primal, prenatal unity and wholeness of man is lost immediately after birth. The divisions lead man away from his wholeness and from the goal of becoming person and human, namely the regaining of the opposing wholeness and completeness.

Structural scheme and interpretation methodology of fate diagnostics

Szondi was aware of the great importance of the I Ching (mediated by Richard Wilhelm , 1924) at CG Jung . He found access to Taoist doctrine of polarity through the study of Jung's " Psychological Types ". As is well known, the Taoist doctrine of polarity , as it is based on the I Ching, finds its most concise compression in the sign Taiji ( Chinese philosophy ). It is noteworthy that the representation of the sign Taiji can be found in Szondi's last publication (1984).

Parallels between the two perspectives of reality are obvious (cf. Offermann, 1986). The original language used in the Book of Changes (I Ching) perfectly fulfills the criterion that Szondi regards as the only important criterion for the comparison with his original language, which was used to diagnose fate, namely "to combine opposites to a unity, to a whole". Structural correspondences between the Taoist doctrine of polarity of the I Ching and Szondi's doctrine of polarity allow a comparison of the two methods of interpreting fate to be justified.

In Szondi's fate diagnosis, the "changes" in "mobility", in "reversal reactions", in "discharges" and "previous discharges" herald themselves (Szondi 1947, 211; 1952, 86, 95; 1972, 457). In the I Ching, moving lines change, the "change lines" in their opposite. Yin lines arise from yang lines and vice versa. From an initial hexagram (basic hexagram) with lines of change, a new hexagram develops in the I Ching interpretation method, a complementary hexagram which modifies the meaning of the basic hexagram. The complementary hexagram shows new tendencies, “seeds” for changes and changes on the path of fate. A hexagram without conversion lines ("resting hexagram") indicates a relatively stable or solidified configuration.

Szondi's diagnosis of fate shows parallels to the methods of interpretation and interpretation of the I Ching, which result from the Taoist insight, according to which polar opposites are hidden in one another. These include the “complementary” or “complementary methods” of experimental drive diagnostics. By taking into account the front and back dynamics of psychological polarities, “movements”, “revolutions” and “changes” in the fate of people should be recorded and made predictable (Szondi 1947, 216; 1952, 29, 86, 102, 116, 200; 1956 , 153; 1972, 68, 209, 291). Linked to this is the prediction of whether and to what extent “reorientations” can occur in the interplay of polarities and thus in the fate of people. It is important for Szondi to know whether the fate-diagnostic constellations are “integrated”, that is, “mixed”, or “disintegrated” and “separated”. When "mixing", two tendencies and drive factors in the same direction are reinforced. If, on the other hand, there is “segregation”, two different factors act on one another. Without mutual control, they end up in divergence and opposition (Szondi 1980, 36).

Publications (selection)

• Analysis of Marriages. An attempt at a theory of choice in love. In: Acta Psychologica, Vol. III, No. 1, 1-80. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1937
• Fate analysis. Choice in love, friendship, profession, illness and death. Hereditary biological and psycho-hygienic problems. Benno Schwabe, Basel 1944
• Experimental drive diagnostics. Depth psychological diagnostics in the service of psychopathology, criminal and professional psychology, characterology and education. Volume I: test volume, volume II: text volume. Hans Huber, Bern 1947
• Drive pathology, Vol. I. Huber, Bern 1952
• Ego-analysis. The basis for the unification of depth psychology. Drive pathology, Vol. II. Huber, Bern 1956
• Textbook of experimental drive diagnostics. Text tape. 2nd completely reworked edition. Hans Huber, Bern 1960
• Trieblinäus band. Identification of people with the help of the Linnaeus tables based on 5086 examinations. Huber, Bern 1960
• Fate analysis therapy. A textbook of passive and active analytical psychotherapy. Huber, Bern 1963
• Cain, forms of evil. Hans Huber, Bern 1969
• Textbook of experimental drive diagnostics, text volume, 3rd expanded edition. Huber, Bern 1972
• Moses. Answer to Cain. Huber, Bern 1973
• The instincts were segregated. Huber, Bern 1980
• Integration of the drives. The instincts mixed. Huber, Bern 1984

biography

• Ludwig Pongratz: Leopold Szondi: Psychotherapy in self-portrayals. Huber, Bern 1973
• Dino Larese: Leopold Szondi: A sketch of life. Amriswiler Bücherei, Amriswil 1976
• Beatrice Kronenberg: The analysis of fate and the life story of its founder Leopold Szondi. Szondi-Verlag, Zurich 1998
• Karl Bürgi-Meyer: Leopold Szondi. A biographical sketch. Szondi-Verlag, Zurich 2000
• Gerhard Stumm et al. (Ed.): Personal dictionary of psychotherapy. Springer, Vienna, New York 2005

Secondary literature

• Henri Ellenberger : Human Fate as a Scientific Problem. As an introduction to Szondi's analysis of fate . In: Psyche, 4th Jhrg., 1951, pp. 576–610.
• Werner Huth: Choice and Fate. Huber, Bern 1978.
• Barbara Handwerker Küchenhoff, Doris Lier (Hrsg.): City of the soul. Psychoanalysis in Zurich. Schwabe reflexe 22, Basel 2012.

Web links

• Literature by and about Leopold Szondi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Szondi Institute: Leopold Szondi's estate administration
• Leopold Szondi
• ISG International Szondi Society
• The Szondi Forum
• Szondi fate analysis CEP

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leopold Szondi . Google Sites. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
2. ↑ The Szondiweg . alt-zueri.ch. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
3. ^ Leopold Szondi: Analysis of Marriages - An attempt at a theory of choice in love. In: Acta Psychologica, Vol. III, No. 1, 1-80. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1937
4. ↑ Leopold Szondi: Experimental Drive Diagnostics. Depth psychological diagnostics in the service of psychopathology, criminal and professional psychology, characterology and education. Volume I: test volume, volume II: text volume. Hans Huber, Bern 1947. - Leopold Szondi: Textbook of experimental drive diagnostics. Text tape. 2nd completely reworked edition. Hans Huber, Bern 1960. - Leopold Szondi: Textbook of experimental drive diagnostics, text volume, 3rd expanded edition. Huber, Bern 1972
5. ^ Leopold Szondi: Education and treatment of the instincts. In: Swiss Journal for Psychology and its Applications, Volume V, Issue 1, 3-14. Huber, Bern 1946. - Leopold Szondi: Freedom and Coercion in the Destiny of the Individual, 61-73. Huber, Bern 1968
6. ^ Leopold Szondi: Man and Fate. Elements of a dialectical science of fate (anankology). Science and worldview, 7th year, issue 1/2, 15-34. Herold, Vienna 1954
7. ^ Leopold Szondi: I-Analysis. The basis for the unification of depth psychology. Drive pathology, Vol. II. Huber, Bern 1956
8. ^ Leopold Szondi (ed.): Healing Paths in Depth Psychology. Huber, Bern 1956
9. ^ Leopold Szondi: Analysis of Fate Therapy. A textbook of passive and active analytical psychotherapy. Huber, Bern 1963
10. ^ Leopold Szondi: analysis of fate. Choice in love, friendship, profession, illness and death. Hereditary biological and psycho-hygienic problems. Benno Schwabe, Basel 1944
11. ^ Leopold Szondi: analysis of fate. First book. Choice in love, friendship, profession, illness and death. Published as Volume VI of the book series "Psychohygiene Science and Practice" by Heinrich Meng. Second, revised edition. Benno Schwabe, Basel 1948
12. ^ Edward O. Wilson: Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1975. - Edward O. Wilson: Biology as Fate. The sociobiological foundations of human behavior. Ullstein, Munich 1980
13. ↑ Leopold Szondi: Revision of the question of the "hereditary burden". Hereditary hygiene considerations about human conductors. In: Federn-Meng, Die Psychohygiene. Maria Pfister-Ammende (Ed.), Vol. 1, 61-77. Huber, Bern 1949
14. ↑ Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976
15. ^ Karl Bürgi-Meyer: Leopold Szondi. A biographical sketch. Szondi-Verlag, Zurich 2000
16. ↑ Dean Hamer: The God gene. Why belief is in our blood. Kösel, Munich 2006
17. ↑ see 1.
18. ^ Leopold Szondi: The State Special Education Laboratory for Pathology and Therapy, Budapest. Program, organization and direction of work. In: E. Lesch (Ed.), Report on the 5th Congress for Curative Education in Cologne. Rudolph Müller & Steinicke, Munich 1930, 173-174
19. ^ Leopold Szondi: Curative Education in the Prophylaxis of Nervous and Mental Diseases. In: H. Hanselmann, Therese Simon (ed.), Report on the 1st International Congress for Curative Education, Geneva, 24.-26. July 1939, 24-61. Gebr. Leemann & Co., Zurich 1940
20. ↑ Leopold Szondi: Cain, shaping the evil. Hans Huber, Bern 1969
21. ^ Leopold Szondi: Moses. Answer to Cain. Huber, Bern 1971
22. ^ Leopold Szondi: Trieblinäus band. Identification of people with the help of the Linnaeus tables based on 5086 examinations. Huber, Bern 1960
23. ↑ Leopold Szondi: Power pathology. Vol. I. Huber, Bern 1952
24. ^ Leopold Szondi: Integration of the drives. The instincts mixed. Huber, Bern 1984
25. ^ Peter H. Offermann: I Ching. The ancient Chinese oracle and wisdom book. Gondrom, Bindlach 1986
26. ↑ Leopold Szondi: Die Triebentmischten. Huber, Bern 1980