Szondi test
Encyclopedia
The Szondi test is a psychological exam named after its Hungarian creator, Léopold Szondi
in the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest
Hungary
. It is a projective personality test, similar to the well-known Rorschach test
. The test consists of a series of 48 different photographs of the faces of mental patients. The subject is instructed to choose the two most appealing and unappealing photos. The photos the subject chooses will supposedly reflect his or her own pathology.
Szondi further broke down the results into four different vectors: a homosexual/sadistic, epileptic/hysterical, catatonic/paranoid and depressive/manic.
Szondi believed that people are inherently attracted to people similar to them . His theory of genotropism
states that there are specific genes that regulate mate selection, and that similarly-gened individuals would seek each other out.
Szondi test is not widely used in the modern clinical psychology, because its psychometric properties are weak. However, it remains in the history of psychology as one of the well-know psychological instruments, although its use today is marginal, being replaced by modern psychological instruments, with good psychometric properties.
Léopold Szondi
Léopold Szondi was a Hungarian psychiatrist, born in present day Slovakia and raised in a a German and Slovak speaking family. He is known for the psychological tool that bears his name, the Szondi test. He developed a form of depth psychology that had some prominence in Europe in the mid-20th...
in the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. It is a projective personality test, similar to the well-known Rorschach test
Rorschach test
The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning...
. The test consists of a series of 48 different photographs of the faces of mental patients. The subject is instructed to choose the two most appealing and unappealing photos. The photos the subject chooses will supposedly reflect his or her own pathology.
Szondi further broke down the results into four different vectors: a homosexual/sadistic, epileptic/hysterical, catatonic/paranoid and depressive/manic.
Szondi believed that people are inherently attracted to people similar to them . His theory of genotropism
Genotropism
Genotropism is defined as the reciprocal attraction between carriers of the same or related latent recessive genes. Developed by the Hungarian psychiatrist Léopold Szondi in the 1930s, the theory concludes that instinct is biological and genetic in origin...
states that there are specific genes that regulate mate selection, and that similarly-gened individuals would seek each other out.
Szondi test is not widely used in the modern clinical psychology, because its psychometric properties are weak. However, it remains in the history of psychology as one of the well-know psychological instruments, although its use today is marginal, being replaced by modern psychological instruments, with good psychometric properties.
External links
- Faces of Madness: Seeing abnormality through photography (Explanation of test with photographs)
- Homepage of Szondi-Institute (in German)
- Homepage of CEP (Centre d’Etudes Pathoanalytiques)
- Scoring-spreadsheet in Excel and Openoffice Calc format. Can be set to English, French, German, Dutch
- A minor online version of the test (in French)
- Home page of Tokio Szondi Gesellschaft(in Japan)