Szondi Test:

Its Interpretation

 and

Graphological

Indicators1

 

 

By

Arthur C. Johnston, PhD

© 2006

by Arthur C. Johnston

 

1 Omitted are all graphological materials that appeared in the 2001 edition.

Included are:

Extracts from Martin Achtnich’s book Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupation Picture-Test], 1979

Extracts from Lipot Szondi’ books, both translated by Arthur C. Johnston

Extracts from Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice, 1949

 

 

 

 

An Introduction to Szondi, Achtnich, and Occupations

 

Lipot Szondi: A Short Biography

 

Lipot Szondi was not a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, despite his intense interest and work in these areas.  He was an internist, specifically an endocrinologist.  But psychopathology and psychology were his side interests.  From 1927 to 1941, Szondi was in charge of a psychology laboratory at the University of Budapest under the supervision of a very liberal director.  Here, Szondi began his genealogical research, which resulted ultimately in the Szondi Test. 

His original inspirations for his genealogical investigations were a dream and his interest in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work and life.  Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist in the 19th Century, was an epileptic who had epileptics and murders in his family tree.  His novel The Idiot is about a priest who is an epileptic and becomes involved with a murderer. The Brothers Karamazov has an epileptic son kill his father and another son who is a priest.  The Epileptic Drive Circle has epileptics, murderers, and priests.  

Sigmund Freud believed in drives but always kept to pairs of drives such as love and aggression or ego and id and never wanted to study or create a systematic analysis of human drives.  Szondi created the four drives based on his insights and the psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge of his time. 

In 1941, Szondi was driven out of the University of Budapest by the pro-Nazi government because he was a Jew.  In 1944, Szondi was deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  And in 1945, he ended up in Switzerland and eventually settled in Zurich.  Here he started his private practice as a psychoanalyst.

In 1944, he published Schicksalsanalyse (in German), his book on genealogical work and the drives.  The title of the book means Fate Analysis.  In this book he introduced the concept of the latent genes.   Mendel’s pea experiments illustrate this: a wrinkled pea has a latent gene of a smooth pea, and vice versa.   Two latent genes will produce an outward characteristic, but if only one latent gene is present, the dominant gene will determine the characteristic. These latent genes, according to Szondi, are not without effects however.  They represent our family ancestors and can become our future ones.  They belong to the realm of the unknown, the unconscious.   Szondi called this area the Familial Unconscious, which has all our latent ancestors.   Szondi adds this Familial Unconscious to Freud’s Personal Unconscious and to Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious.

How do these latent genes affect a person?  Szondi concludes that these latent genes determine our choices: choice of friends, lovers, forms of illnesses (both physical and mental), jobs, interests, sports, hobbies, and even our form of death in some cases.  All this occurs through genotropism, the like choosing the like.  Trope means to lean toward.  Birds of a feather flock together, so to speak.  The latent genes through the choices we make determine our fate; thus, this is determinism.  But the ego has a say in all this and can make conscious choices that give us freedom.  

In 1947, Szondi published Experimentelle Triebdiagnostik [Experimental Drive Diagnostic].   Since it was time consuming and very difficult to trace the family tree to see all the influences of the latent genes, Szondi created the Szondi test as a quick way to see what choices, projected from the Familial Unconscious, were working in a person’s life.   This book in 1947 gave the interpretations for the Szondi test.   This test consists of six sets of eight pictures of the extreme manifestations of the different drive needs that are present in humans.  These are the bisexual [normally called homosexual], the sadist, the epileptic in the control stage, the hysteric, the catatonic, the paranoid, the depressive of the manic–depressive, and the manic of the manic-depressive.  We all have the same drives as these extremes but in different quantities and combinations.

In the Fifties, hundreds of publications on Szondi’s work were published in English and other languages in Europe and the East.  Some were enthusiastic; others destructive.   All projective tests and depth psychologies have difficulty being accepted; the Szondi test was no exception.

However, Szondi’s genealogical basis for his work was not accepted by professionals in that field.  And since Szondi’s drive circles and ideas covered the professional areas of Freudian psychoanalysis, Jung’s Analytical Psychology, Adler’s psychology, among others, and since Szondi was not a member of any of these groups, he had difficulty being accepted by them.  Even today, some of the users of his test, ideas, and theories reject the genealogical part of his work.  Others do not. 

In Zurich, Szondi found new disciples.   He published many more books such as Ich-Analyse [Ego Analysis] in 1956.  See “Resources” at the back of this booklet. 

In 1969, Szondi established the Szondi Institute, which is still in operation.  Szondi was awarded Honorary Doctor from the two Universities of Louvain (1969) and Paris (1975).  The University of Louvain is a center of research in Szondi’s work and psychoanalysis.

In 1979, Martin Achtnich published his Der Berufsbilder-Test [The Occupations Picture Test], still used today, which has Szondi’s eight needs for selecting one’s occupation.   This test consists of 96 pictures [one set for men and one for women].  Each picture is of a person in an occupational setting.  For example, a reporter interviewing someone.   The Testee chooses the pictures he likes, those that are disliked, and those that are indifferent to him.  Each picture represents one of Szondi’s eight needs.   Thus, a profile of the Testee’s drive profile is obtained.  Since one’s needs choose the area of work, then a recommendation can be made for possible occupations.  The test manual gives wonderful insights into the practical workings of the eight needs in one’s everyday life.

The web site for The Szondi Forum [www.szondiforum.org] under the guidance of Leo Berlips shows the countries and people that have an intense interest in Szondi’s Test and his ideas.   There are active groups in France, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Japan among others.  

The books on graphology and Szondi works are flourishing.  And there’s a growing interest in the United States among graphologists about his work.

Many academics and professionals in psychoanalysis and psychiatry often shy away from Szondi’s work because of the disputes over his work and its validity and because his work crosses so many different fields.   No one field can claim him as one of theirs.  Szondi is describing the human condition in a universal way.  

 

Szondi’s Thinking behind the Test

 

Szondi believes there are three kinds of unconscious: the Personal Unconscious, identified and explored by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious, which explores the symbols, myths, and patterns of thought and actions that belong to everyone universally, and Szondi’s own Familial Unconscious, which is composed of the genetic ancestors within each of us.  The Personal Unconscious produces symptoms; the Collective Unconscious symbols; and the Familial Unconscious choice.

Our genes from our two parents determine who we are.   If both parents contribute the same gene to an offspring, then the inheritor will have this characteristic.  Brown eyes would be an example: both parents have the gene that produces brown eyes.  However, a child may have different colored eyes but be a carrier of the brown eye gene from one parent.  The brown eye gene is therefore latent and can become dominant if later the offspring mates with a carrier of the brown eye gene and both brown eye genes are passed from each parent.

Szondi affirms that these latent genes are not powerless. He believes that these latent genes determine one’s choices of loved ones, jobs, forms of illness and even death, character traits, intellectual interests, and sports.  And much more. 

How is this so?  Szondi believes that when we are attracted to a person, we do so because we both are conductors of some latent ancestor.  Let’s say that in one’s father was a manifest epileptic, but one’s mother was not.  One of the children could become a carrier of the epileptic gene—thus be a latent epileptic—and consequently would not be a manifest epileptic.  If this conductor of the latent epileptic gene met another person who was also a carrier of the latent epileptic gene, they would both feel an affinity for each other, for both would, in a sense, belong to the same family circle of epileptics.  Of course, the conductor of the latent epileptic gene would be attracted to a manifest epileptic.

Szondi calls this attraction force genotropism.

Another example: suppose a person descends from a schizophrenic father and a healthy mother.  Since there are not passed two dominant genes representing schizophrenia, the descendant does not manifest any schizophrenic disorder.  However, this latent schizophrenic gene would determine one’s choices in love, jobs, interests, activities, and other phases of one’s life.  This is the Schicksal—Fate—part of Szondi’s thinking.  The other part of his thinking is that the ego has some freedom in choosing what will be acceptable or not.  Freedom and Fate are two sides of the same coin.

It is important to realize that just because one chooses a picture of a mentally ill person such as a depressive does not mean that one is a manifest depressive.  The genes represent drives and more specifically needs that must be satisfied.  And there are many ways a need can be satisfied and thus relieve the tension.  Ulrich Moser in The Szondi Test in Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment lists the possible ways the sadism (s) need may be satiated:

• native satiation: sadism, perversion

• normal satiation: activity, masculine behavior of varying degrees

• sublimation: that is, “struggle” for humane goals

• drive disorder: neurosis, psychosis: defense against aggression

• genotropic satiation: choice of a sadistic partner (libidotropism)

• criminal satiation: slaying by means of a hatchet, knife, etc.

• character formation through introjection (k+): being hard-hearted, for example

• occupations: slaughter, soldier, butcher, sculpturer, hunter, wrestler, boxer.

The charts on each Drive, showing the two opposing needs, are divided so that one can see how the needs are satiated.  For example, the “Phylogenetic, animalistic,” “Psychic Characteristics,” “Pathologic, extreme, and negative manifestations” [including drive disorders, delinquency, suicide], “Physiologic, normal socialized manifestations [including Drive symptoms, maturity, socialization, character, occupation, professional field,” and “Socially Positive manifestations on a higher level [including Sublimation and occupations.]”

 When one looks at the results of the Szondi Test, one cannot immediately know how a particular need is being satisfied.  Only by studying the company each need keeps can one determine the possible ways a need is being satisfied.  One test is not sufficient to give an adequate picture of one’s needs; for this reason, ten tests are the standard number given over a period of weeks.

Szondi in the same book that Ulrich Moser appears gives some clear examples about how one satisfies one’s needs in socially acceptable ways.  He notes that descendants of mentally disordered persons become the most capable and natural psychiatrists or psychiatric nurses.  Descendants of querulents (willful litigants)—the paranoia area—unconsciously choose occupations such as district attorney and judge.  Szondi also cites the situation where there was a criminal in the person’s family, and this person became a prison guard.   Most interestingly, Szondi cited the situation where two identical twins were separated and one became a criminal and one a prison guard.

Fundamental to all of Szondi’s thinking is the idea of opposites—or schisms.  The need h opposes s; h+, h-; s+, s-; h+ s-, h- s+, and many other possible oppositions within the drive itself.  The negative, positive, ambivalent, and zero choices initially given make up the foreground drive picture, which is closest to consciousness.  Szondi, however, creates a theoretical opposite to this initial test result and calls this the background drive picture.  This represents a deeper layer of the familial unconscious.   It is a matter of opposites: one cannot have light without darkness, good without evil, Christ without the Devil, masochism without sadism.   

Under certain conditions, the background drive picture—really the drive of a potential fate or past family member—can come to the fore and thus switch positions with the foreground.  A mild mannered person, for example, under the influence of alcohol or drugs can become belligerent.  An extremely shy person by the excessive shyness calls attention to herself or himself, for in the background of the shy person is the show-off.

Ulrich Moser in his chapter of the book on Szondi gives some interesting insights on the operation of the foreground and background drive pictures, which he calls the predecessor and successor.  He believes that the foreground [predecessor] represents the needs that have been repressed in the personal unconscious and thus have been internalized as reaction formations, character elements, and symptoms.  The foreground also greatly determines our dreams and character.

The background, however, has these effects.  One, it adds an emotional coloration to the foreground.  For example, the passive person (s-) however in this very passivity is demanding and thus has a distinct aggressive nuance (s+).   The background has a great influence on the symptoms chosen.

The background [or successor] expresses itself in choosing persons in our lives.  We may often choose persons who have the same drive structure in their foreground, which is our own background.  This often happens in choice of occupations: the background finds satisfaction in an occupation.  For example an apparently good person becomes a policeman and spends his life chasing criminals, who represent the policeman’s own criminal background drive system.  The fireman working for the good of society to stop the pyromaniacs of this world can satisfy his own background strivings to set fires.   Szondi always is stressing that the only difference between the abnormal and the normal is a matter of quantity, not quality.

One final opposition among many is that of the middle two drives [Paroxysmal and Schizophrenic, or Ego] and the peripheral drives Sexual and Contact.  The Paroxysmal is the realm of the Superego; thus, the middle represents the Superego and Ego defending against the drive perils represented by the border drives Sexual and Contact [anal and oral] and its own dangers created within itself.

Szondi calls the middle the censorial system since it is concerned with the individual’s system of values, his attitudes, and his orientation toward life.  And this area makes the decisions that will determine one’s behavior:

                 e = the ethical censor [the internal censor of conscience]

                 hy = the moral censor [the adapting to society’s views of morality]

                 k  = the censor of reality

                 p = the censor of ideals.

The ethical and moral issues belong to the realm of the superego.

A final opposition is that of Dur-Moll.  These German words in Szondi’s sense means masculine (Dur) and feminine (Moll).  As you will see the Sexual Drive contains the h—representing the feminine—and the s—standing for the masculine.  All the eight needs, however, are classified as belonging to the masculine and feminine. 

The masculine needs are h-, s+, e-, hy+, k+/- and +, p 0, d+, and m-. 

The feminine needs are h+, s-, e+, hy-, k0, p +/- and +, d-, and m+. 

 

 The Szondi Test

 

[See Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice for greater details.]

 

The Szondi Test is a projective test.  The purpose of the Szondi Test is to reflect the personality as a functioning dynamic whole.  The test is dynamic because it shows the drive needs of a person, which are constantly undergoing changes.  For example, an Epileptic goes through a stage of rising tension, explosive discharge, and peaceful state; the Szondi Test if given in each stage would reflect the changing tensions of the drive needs. 

The eight pictures of each set represent the drive needs [factors] and their degree of tension.   These needs act as the driving forces in a person in that one performs certain acts and chooses or avoids certain objects or persons.  These objects are chosen or avoided to reduce the tension caused by the unreleased need.  The specific type of activity or goal objects will be determined by the particular drive need.

The eight needs, or factors, represented by the extreme states of the hermaphrodite [or bisexual] who is generally labeled as a homosexual[1], sadist, epileptic, hysteric, catatonic, paranoid, depressive, and manic correspond to the eight need systems in the person taking the test.  The eight types of mental and emotional diseases and perversions represent certain psychological needs in extreme form which are present to some degree in every person.   A normal person or an abnormal one can choose from the pictures; the quantity of positive and negative choices and the resulting patterns can indicate the state of either one. 

The person taking the test chooses pictures from the factor, or need, that corresponds to his own need that is in tension.  The greater the number of pictures chosen from one factor [both likes and dislikes], the greater the tension of this drive need in the person.  These needs with the greatest number of choices represent the underlying causes of one’s manifest behavior.

On the other hand, the lack of choices in a certain factor means that the corresponding need is not in a state of tension.  This can be true because of constitutional weakness of the drive need or because the need is lived out in some adequate activity.  This is an “open” reaction.  There is the least resistance to the need being lived out.  That is why observed symptoms and manifest behavior can be interpreted on the basis of these open or drained reactions.  However, the quality of these behaviors can be psychotic, neurotic, antisocial, or normal.  A sadist may live out his aggressive need by actually harming others; whereas, a surgeon may use the same aggression to help others.  

The underlying psychodynamic causes of one’s observable behavior—shown by the open responses—is indicated by the loaded factors indicated by the like and dislike choices.  This is similar to the case of the latent and dominant genes: the choices are determined by the latent—hidden—genes and the dominant genes—here the open responses—determine the manifest behavior.  Of course, the ego has a part in these choices.

A positive response for pictures representing a certain factor, or need, indicates a conscious or unconscious identification with the motivational forces as depicted by the photographs of the particular need.

A negative response indicates the existence of a counter-identification with the psychological processes of the stimulating pictures.  We are not referring to repression when citing a negative response since this can be a conscious choice, and repression only works unconsciously.

          An ambivalent reaction means that both a counter-identification and identification are present. There is some self-control acting in this indecisive situation about the discharge of tension in actual activities.   Therefore, these are subjective internal symptoms as seen, for example, in compulsives and hypochondriacs.  The objective symptoms are represented by the open reactions.

          A fundamental aspect of the final total at the end of the Scoring Sheet is the foreground and background ego.   The foreground ego is the profile first obtained on the Scoring Sheet: for example: h- s+ e- hy+ k+/- p0 d+ m-.   However, behind this ego possible fate is another one: the background ego, which is the reverse of the previous one: h+ s- e+ hy- k 0 p +/- d- m+.  The foreground ego has a male sexual drive, a Cain—do evil—Paroxysmal drive, a compulsive masculine material ego, and an unfaithful object relationship in the Contact Vector.  Under certain circumstances, his background ego could appear—as under the influence of alcohol, for example: a female sexual drive, an Able—a do-gooder, a feminine ego, and a faithful object relationship.

 

The Sexual Drive

 

I.       The Sexual Vector [Drive] (S):

              [See Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice for greater details.]

 

          h factor (represented by pictures of hermaphrodites [bisexuals] but generally labeled as passive homosexuals) corresponding to the need for passive tenderness and yieldingness: bindng and being one in love [Achtnich: Femininity, Softness]

 

          s factor (represented by pictures of sadists) which corresponds to the need for physical activity and aggressive manipulation of objects: immediate release from and separation [Achtnich: Body Power, Coldness, Hardness].

 

What is a Vector?  It is a force that has both magnitude and direction.   In science, a vector describes what happens when two forces act on a body [in this case the Vector] and influence its direction:

 

h (homosexuality) is a factor that goes in a different direction from s (sadism).

 

S (The Sexual Vector, or Drive) is a common goal for both needs and the result of the two active forces (h and s). 

 

s Vector

 

 

s (sadism) is a factor that goes in a different direction from the h factor.

The h+ Factor

 (h = homosexual)

(Achtnich: Femininity, Softness)

 

Martin Achtnich in his instruction book for Der Berufsbilder-Test [The Occupations Pictures Test] renames this factor “Femininity, Giving in, Feeling, Softness, and Touch needs.”  He changed the name to avoid the connotations of illness or perversion and to make the need more acceptable to the public.  Achtnich and Szondi both made clear that the choice of these pictures does not mean that one is a bisexual or homosexual.  This and all Szondi needs are universal and thus present in everyone.

 

This h need in the sexual drive (or vector) represents the tender yielding part of sexuality and relationships.  This is the need that represents the feminine as classically viewed.  A key point is that it contains little or no motor energy.   The need is for sensual contact through the sense of touch.  It is the opposite of the s [sadism] need, where grabbing and manipulating a physical object is primary; in the h plus case, there are no active moves of this kind.  The occupation of hair dresser, which involves touching the client, represents a social expression of this need.  On a higher level, a physical therapist, who must use one’s hands to work on a patient, exhibits this need.

 

Hermaphrodites [bisexuals], those represented in the Szondi test, are an extreme expression of this ever- present human need.  These males who are seeking love with persons of their own sex are primarily looking for tender love, not the actual intercourse.  They seek the kind of love given by their mother.  This is the love that is passive longing without any physical activity to secure the one loved.

 In his later analysis of this need, Szondi labeled it “Eros” after the Greek god of love.  He wrote:

 

There is no binding in the living world without factor h. It is the most powerful among the bindings.  It is the receiver and giver in love and tenderness.  It is the strongest power, which holds all together, what in the world lives and loves.  Factor h is consequently the Eros radical, the root of love and tenderness and the basis of attraction and binding.  It is as well the creator of individual personal love (h+) and also that of love of humanity (h-).  Factor h is also not only one of the two builtup factors of sexuality.  It is the factor of each binding of human to human in sex and love, in body and spirit.

 

When one chooses h plus, this person accepts and identifies with this need for sensual longing that is unrelated to any active moves toward satisfaction.  This is a feminine identification and means specifically a non-genital need for love and caressing in an infantile sense of mother and child.

Extreme frustration of this need as a child can lead to antisocial and psychotic behavior.  Also individuals who do not choose higher sublimated work such as dermatologists and gynecologists (dealing with touching and the feminine) or cultural activities as lyric poets (expressing personal feelings) or musicians (expressing feelings and touching musical instruments like a banjo) often choose work that involves personal care of others and receiving personal affection in return.

 

Occupations: The Royal Road to Szondi Needs, or Factors

 

          It would be great if you could have some verification about the Szondi factors.

          You will not have any difficulty getting someone to tell you his or her occupation or interests.  Once you have this information, you have great insight into the leading need of the person.  Sigmund Freud said that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.  Occupations and interests are the royal road to the Szondi factors, or needs.

          For instance, if you are told that the person runs a hat store, then you know that the h+ factor, or need, is a prominent one and is being socialized in this occupation.  What’s the connection between selling hats and the h+ need?  One of the ways someone can live out the h+ need for touching is to touch soft materials, clothing, and textiles.   The s+ need, on the other hand, causes one to want to deal with hard materials like steel, iron, or bronze. 

 

Occupations Satisfying the h Need

 

          In his book Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl in Lieb, Freudschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod [Fate Analysis: Choice in Love, Friendship, Occupation, Illness and Death], Szondi establishes that there are four parts involved in one’s choice of an occupation:

          The activity, or function,

          The means or working tool,

          The occupation or professional object/material/goal

          The place.

          For instance: a physical therapist’s activities are to touch, to feel (something), to stoke, to massage, to have to do with the naked body [in some cases] or, in others, to bath or to wash someone; the means is the hand or finger; the professional object is the human body, sometimes naked; the place is a warm room.

          In his Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupations Pictures Test] manual, Martin Achtnich indicates that each choice of an occupation or job involves two needs: the first need is primary and the second is subordinate but important too.  There can be more than two needs involved in one’s choice of an occupation, but Achtnich concentrates on the two most important ones.  In the case of a physical therapist, the primary need is h+ [in Achtnich’s analysis, the Feminine, Softness need], and the secondary need is e+ [Szondi’s Epileptic Circle of the Abel character; Achtnich calls this the social need].  

 

          The Activity, or function, presented by Achtnich offers quick insights into the working of a need. 

 

The functions for h+ [femininity, softness] are:

[1]     to touch, to feel (something), to stroke, to massage, to have to do with the naked body (masseur, physical therapist, nurse, musician of string and plucking instruments);

[2]     to bath or to wash (jobs concerning body hygiene);

[3]     to work on someone’s hair, to put scent or perfume on someone (hair stylist, beautician);

[4]     to serve or to wait on (serving jobs in general);

[5]     to do handwork with soft fabrics and materials, clothing, or textiles (tailors, show window decorator, florist, textile decorator);

[6]     to be full of feelings, to sacrifice, to be full of love, to behave lyrically toward the occupational object (musician, lyric professions which allow one to express his or her feelings).

[7]      to do activities which appeal directly or indirectly to the erotic (dancer, ballet master, film director, model photographer, art and poets concerned with eroticism, lyric poet, dermatologist, sexual researcher, sexual psychologist);

[8]     or to sell articles involving number one, two, three, five, or seven (textile and fashion salespersons, hair and textiles salespersons).

 

Just knowing these eight functions, or activities, greatly helps to identify the h+ need in different occupations and jobs.

          For number one function, or activity [to touch or to feel someone], the means or working tool is the hand or finger; the occupational object, the human body, skin, fur, textiles, soft and warm materials even including soft woods, musical sting instruments; the places are warm rooms, places with an intimate atmosphere, hospitals; the occupations are masseur, physical therapist, pedicurist, midwife, nurse, cosmetologist, pastry cook [soft material involved], musician [string and plucking instruments].

          Remember, however, that there is a secondary need, and sometimes more, in each occupation.  For instance, musical interests express the p need as well as the h+ need.

          Function number four above [to serve or to wait on] has as its means or work tool: turning toward customers and the served as a subordinate; the occupation object: guest, customer, the served, the looked-after; the place: fashion and wash establishments, having guests as a trade business; the occupations: service industry in the widest sense.  The waitress, waiter, and hotel manager fit these categories.

 

The h- Factor

 (h = homosexual)

(Achtnich: Femininity, Softness)

 

Those who indicate that they dislike the pictures of hermaphrodites [bisexuals] when taking the Szondi test are showing a counter-identification with whatever the h need expresses.  Susan Deri in her book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice states that this means that these persons do not want to accept this need for personal tender affection.  However, that does not mean that the need is lacking.  The total number of positive or negative responses to a need indicates the power of this need in one’s drive life.  If all six choices were negative, the need would be extremely powerful.  What could be present is a reaction formation—a reversal of an action.  For example, because of insecurity in the sexual area, one could overemphasize the sadism part of sexuality: the weak man who hides his weakness through the bluff and bluster of being macho.

The h minus moves from the personal love of h plus to the love of humanity.  Thus, those choosing h minus identify themselves with this more abstract form of affection: love of humanity.  These people often are cool in interpersonal relations but show warm social or artistic attitudes.  For example, some intellectuals tend to sublimate their need for tender personal love into various forms of humanistic and culturally desirable activities.

Women who choose h minus may have sexual difficulties since h minus is an active repression of the h plus, which is feminine.  Thus the women are choosing a masculine identification since normal men choose h minus with s plus and normal women choose h plus and s minus.  Here we are discussing the native living out of a need; there are many ways for a need to be lived out.

Those who have h minus will express their needs genotropically, that is, through choice of lovers, friends, jobs, interests, sports, illnesses, and even forms of death. The socialized, not native, form of the h need will be chosen. 

 

Interpretation of the Negative Reaction

According to Achtnich

 

          The turning away from signifies an important strong measure of interest and attraction as that which lets us be indifferent or what we are not able to decide.  The defense becomes affectively and emotionally valued.  The question arises: What does the testee defend with a revealed minus factor?

 

The Denied Factor

the native, original

Factor need

the defense directed

against

the working out of

the defense is

a reaction formation

-W [h-] Femininity

Touching and

feeling needs           

one’s own weakness,

latent homosexuality

insecurity in the sexual area; overemphasis of

K [muscle power: s+]

or SE

[energy-minded; Cain: e-]

 

Why does the testee as noted deny exactly these factors?  The answer follows:

a.     Either the testee does not have this need in general; that is, there is an absence of a relationship to this factor,

b.    Or simply this need is so inherently strong that it means a danger to the testee,

c.      Or this need in the course of education and development learned this kind of defense that there can be no more development. The testee has accepted this manner of defense in his environment against this need and made it his own defense behavior.  This mechanism plays a striking role in the building of one’s conscience and in the formation of one’s social behavior.

 

Which meaning now does the denied, respectively not chosen factors for the occupation choice?  Can one assume that the testee will simply have noting to with the denied factor?  This can be the situation, but it is not always so: namely not when the same denied primary factor appears as a positive secondary factor.  This phenomenon is known as “Reversion.” 

                                                              

The Reversion

 

Reversion appears in the test as follows:

A factor is denied as a primary factor but appears in the ranking succession of secondary factors in the front or not very far from it.   This means that the denied factor seeks after an indirect occupation substitute satisfaction.  What are now the indirect substitute satisfactions of a denied need?  The need can be no more directed along the path of the function activity. It becomes transformed therein into interest in the object.

The denied factors appear also in the test in two ways:

[1] complete defense: in the test in the front of the rank of negative primary factors and simultaneously at the front of the ranking of the negative secondary factors.

 [2] reversion: in the test at the end of the raking of the positive primary factors but simultaneously at the front (or very close to it) in the rank of positive secondary factors.

          Accordingly, the minus choices have two aspects: the complete defense against a factor and the reversion.

          A reversion is always a “discrepancy between the foreground and hinterground,” which means the testee is neurotic in relationship to this need: the original need is repressed and seeks now a vent for itself. The reversion leads to an “indirect satisfaction” of the need in which a transformation of the native need into an occupation interest occurs.  The direct need satisfaction represents no unconditional “primitive” but indirectly a “higher” occupation solution.  The indirect satisfaction not compulsively to a spiritualization, which still in the first case depends if understanding and spirit are present.  It is however the privilege of spiritual men that this possibility stands open to unstructure [umzustrukturieren] his needs and to put them into and integrate them into a spiritual connection.  In this case, the factors S (social minded), Z (aesthetic needs), V (understanding/thinking), and G (spirit) come to particular significance, which are the bearer factors of these unstructured and socialization tendencies.  It also lets itself be designated as the kernel factors of the personality.

 

          In the next tables are the complete defense and the reversion for the h factor.

 

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-W [h-]           

Denial of any bodily touching. Lovelessness. Contact disturbance.

Loving turning toward the partner without coming into any bodily contact with him or her (Example: a teacher’s behavior toward a student)

 

The h 0 Factor

 (h = homosexual; 0 = open or drained)

 

Anytime there is a zero number or only one or one each of a like and dislike for a need, this indicates that the need for being the passive receiver of love is being lived out.  The result is a lack of tension.  Small children and infantile adults who are loved and pampered as a child would supply an open h factor.  This could occur also in the native living out of the need by impotent men and overt homosexuality.  If the homosexual is a female, then this is a passive type who has a strong attachment to a mother figure and then attaches herself submissively and dependently to a mother figure.

The open h can also appear temporarily after sexual intercourse or masturbation.

On a higher cultural level, this open h can appear in those who can sublimate intellectually without being disturbed by sexual tension.

Ultimately, there is no real difference between a loaded factor (including both likes and dislikes) and an open factor.   One can change into the other, and both indicate the presence of the need, or factor, in one’s life.   Only in those cases where the open factor does not change is indicated that this is a constitutional weakness.

A loaded factor--four to six choices, either likes or dislikes--often precedes an open reaction.  The loaded factor also works genotropically and thus determines one’s choices of lovers, friends, interests, sports, occupations, illnesses, and, sometimes, forms of death.  Szondi writes, “An understanding of the dynamics underlying these two extreme reaction types reveals that there is no qualitative difference between open and loaded reactions.  An open reaction does not mean that the particular drive tendencies are nonexistent in the individual’s makeup; it means merely that a previously loaded drive tendency has diminished in dynamic force as a result of discharge.  This explains the tendency of certain subjects to produce an ambivalent loaded reaction in the first test and an open reaction in the second or vice versa.  Drive tendencies are in a dynamic process, subject to change and variation and are not absolute stable psychic factors.

 

The s Factor

 (s = sadism)

(Achtnich: Body Power [Kraft (K) in German = Power] Strength; Hardness)

[See Susan Deri’s book and Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book for more information.]

 

The s+ Factor

 (s = sadism)

 

The s need, or factor, is the active side of sexuality.  This need refers to muscular energy and the motor power to manipulate objects in one’s environment.  Overall, this means activity in general.  The extreme example of this is the sadist, who acts out his or her aggression in native form.  Motor activity and aggression go together here.  Szondi called this side of the sexual vector Thanatos [Death and destruction], the opposite of Eros, the god of love.

The s need corresponds to the need to intrude, to be strong, and to be hard.  This is the active masculine aspect of sexuality.

Those who indicate that they like the sadists’ pictures are identifying themselves with this need for activity directed outward toward objects.  The need is for a high degree of physical activity and for uninhibited aggression.  A socialized version of this need is a boxer [who also has an exhibitionist side].  He takes out his aggression and desire for activity upon an opponent.

Susan Deri in her book relates s plus to concrete behavior and s minus to wanting to deal with abstract behavior: dealing with symbols and words. 

This s plus is a masculine reaction, and in sexuality this means that the person actively goes after his object, needing to be the initiator in every aspect of the relationship.  The focus of the s plus need is outward and thus the need to fight reality rather than to withdraw.  Impulsive characters and criminals, more extreme forms, often have the s plus reaction.

The s plus is characteristic for children and for those who are not engaged in intellectual work.  When an intellectual or cultured person chooses s plus, one will expect lots of aggression behind the person’s causes and ideas, and the interest will be in real things.  Writers rarely have the s plus choices, but sculpturers do because they use tools to work on hard stone or metal, something real.  Writers, on the other hand, manipulate purely symbolic materials (musical tones or words).

The s plus in extreme cases will show up in antisocial behavior.  Women who choose s plus, the masculine side of sexuality, can have problems in the sexual area or will sublimate in some cultural or social way. 

 

Occupations Satisfying the s Need

 

The functions, or activities, represented by Achtnich are body power [strength, force] and hardness:

1]      to hit, to hammer, to chisel, to nail, to rivet, to carve, to stick, to bore, to mill, to saw, to scrape, to sharpen, to separate, to cut off, to penetrate, to pierce (one working on machines, building-site fitter, plumber, driller, woodworker with hard wood, forester, carpenter)

[2]     to lift loads, to bear loads or weights (transportation worker, hauler of heavy loads)

[3]     to break, to destroy (construction worker, miner, demolition worker)

[4]     to hack, to shovel, to use a pick (street cleaner, helper in farming, and railroad building workers)

[5]     to kill, to shoot (butcher, soldier, hunter)

[6]     to box, to pull up, to fight, to wrestle, to fence (a boxer, wrestler, fencer, javelin thrower)

[7]     to tame animals, to fetter, to overpower, to control (police for criminals, animal trainer)

[8]     to operate (surgeon, physician, dentist)

[9]     to use body power (in general) (handwork occupations, work requiring body strength)

[10]   to conquer, to dominate, to attack, to defeat, to push in front, to elbow (positions which demand an extreme power to push through or to achieve)

[11]   to be mentally brutal, to be aggressive, to be destructive, to make extreme noise (combat and fighting jobs or professions with men or animals)

[12]   to be hard in pursuing a definite goal, to carry through harsh measures, thoughtlessly hard (bailiffs, prison officers, jailers, instructors)

 

The s- Factor

 (s = sadism)

 

Those who choose s minus have tension in the need for aggression and activity but do not accept this need or identify with it.   Again, the disliking of a need shows the strength of the need in the person.                  

The result is that this energy normally directed outward is turned inward into intellectual energy.  Now, concepts and abstract elements are manipulated instead of concrete objects in the environment.  Susan Deri calls this abstract behavior.   There is a low level of physical activity.  The activity now works on an intellectual level.  Often, this turning away from outward aggression can lead one to want to help others. 

Those choosing s minus in the face of conflict like to withdraw from any kind of fight in reality unlike the s plus persons.  Little antisocial behavior will be seen in the s minus person.

The s minus person has more ability to sublimate [to use one’s drive for higher social and cultural purposes] than the average person.  The s minus is associated with the feminine, and thus shows that a person does not identify with physical activity and aggression associated with the masculine.  Many men who are intellectuals and work with concepts and symbols—not material objects—give the s minus choice.  Waiters, store clerks, and those who serve and wait on others, thus taking a subservient role, often select the s minus.

Masochism, depression because of the repressed aggression, difficulties in the sexual area for men can be present in extreme cases.  A passive man, however, can be quite happy with a dominant woman with s plus choice.

 

Achtnich: Interpretation of the Negative Reaction s

 

          What does the person defend with a revealed minus factor?

 

The Denied Factor

the native, original

Factor need

the defense directed

against                       

the working out of

the defense is

a reaction formation

-K [s-] 

Power, Hardness,

Strength

rough power, inconsiderate

aggression

inhibition of

aggression,

emphasis on e+ (social, helping need; Abel)               

 

          In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for the K [s+] need.

 

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-K [s-]

Denial of each bodily activity, in particular working with one’s hands

The aggression is turned into an interest (example: research of criminals, collector of weapons, interest in war and history of wars)

 

The s 0 Factor

 (s = sadism; 0 = open or drained)

 

An open, or zero, response indicates that the need is being lived out in some way; here that would mean that there are lots of activity or aggression.

People who are constantly involved in many activities and those who sublimate their aggression in some intellectual or scientific work can give this response.  There is no tension since the need is being satisfied; the s plus would have some tension since the need is not being totally satisfied.

Criminals often give the open s as well as the s plus.

On a higher cultural level, this open s can appear in those who can sublimate intellectually without being disturbed by sexual tension.

 

Sixteen Combinations for the Sexual Vector

[See Szondi, Moser, and Webb book for detailed analyses.]

[Extract from L. Szondi, Experimental Diagnostics of Drives, English translation by Gertrude Aull]

 

S1 =            + +             Healthy sexuality of the average person

S2 =            0 +              Activity, sadism, “the pious hangman”

S3 =            + 0              Infantile or senile sexuality with aggressiveness

S4 =            0 -               Inactivity, passivity, masochism

S5 =            + -               Passivity; in the male: goal inversion

S6 =            - 0               Active, masculine humanization of sexuality

S7 =            - +               Partial humanization; in the female: goal inversion

S8 =            - -                Complete humanization of sexuality

S9 =            0 +/-          Childish bisexuality, beginning of civilization of aggression

S10 =          + +/-          Tendency to sadomasochism

S11 =          - +/-           Humanization of aggressive tendencies

S12 =          +/- +          Normal sexuality, beginning socialization

S13 =          +/- +/-      Complete bisexuality

S14 =          +/- 0          Socialization of bisexuality and of aggression

S15 =          +/- -           Humanization of bisexuality through self-coercive techniques

S16 =          0 0              Infantile sexuality, discharge or abstinence

 

Some General Observations

 

s-    : intellectual activity, interest in abstract ideas and symbols, manipulation of  concepts, words, and symbols.

     versus

s + : physical activity, interest in concrete things and behavior, manipulation of things and people

 

We will see a similar contrast with the d factor:

 

d-  : abstract interests and ideals

     versus

d+ : concrete behavior and concern with the material

 

The following chart—and the others forthcoming for each drive—is a compendium of similar charts that appear in Szondi’s books.  Some introductory remarks are ideas developed by pathoanalysis [a combination of Szondi’s ideas minus any reference to genes and chiefly Freud’s and Lacan’s psychoanalytic ideas.

 

Szondi: Transformation of the Apparent Forms of Drive Factors:

Personality Vicissitudes Related to the Eight Drive Needs

 

Drive Vectors

 

S

Sexual Drive

Drive Factors

h

(Homosexual)

Femininity/maternalism

The factor (h), the Eros factor, governs any connection or formation of bonds.  It is the factor of sensuality, erotication of the body; it expresses the need for tenderness.

s

(Sadism)

Masculinity

The factor (s) is responsible for the

destruction of the object bonds.  It is the general actor of the body activity, of the investment in the muscle system.  It concentrates on the possession of the body as an object.  It is the factor of the world of perceptions.

Drives Related to:

[The ideas here come from those of patho-analysis.]

The Relationship to the “Body”

     The vectors Sexual (s) and Contact (c) reveal the drive movements by which the world is invested in the most immediate way (in the literal sense of the term, i. e, without mediation).  These vectors, known as the peripheral, translate the relation of the subject to the world, at the same time, as a sexual and as a social being.  It concerns the area of object relations.

     The Sexual vector points to the relation with the body.  It has to do with the “attitudes of the subject to his/her body, attitudes which become sexual in a strict sense only by combining them with the components of the other vectors.  It is by way of the mediation of the contact drive by which it will make the connection with the other bodies.”

Other Descriptions

h+: tendency to personal sensual affection

h-: tendency to collective humanitarian kindness

the tendency of the subject to immerse in his own body, to indulge in getting enjoyment from it; in essence the abandonment to the flesh though sexuality is still undifferentiated

s+: tendency to sadism, aggression, activity.  (The tendency to live one’s corporeality as a lure, as passing the proper limits.  The body is not given to itself but to the domination of what is not itself.  It is the body that imposes itself and dominates, which uses force and rape.)

s-: tendency to civilization, generosity, humility, sacrifice, passivity, masochism

(The body is turned against itself to reject all capacity to go over the limits. The body is kept to itself without enjoyment and ultimately aims as self-destruction.)

Phylogenetic, animalistic

hermaphroditic love

to rob (take by force) and attack need

Freudian: Early childhood-pregenital

Partial drives

Bisexual, erotic

sadistic-erotic

Psychic Characteristics

 

(with particular consideration of the reversal of the sexual goals, the metatropism [the man will be a woman; the woman will be a man]

[These are also the same psychic characteristics of women.]

Feminine psychic characteristics with men:

tenderness, passivity

wish to live out and to feel tenderness

wish to be commanded, to be overwhelmed, to be seized, to be conquered

tendency to give into another

wish to subjugate oneself

take on the role of the succubus

wish to be lead and to be presented with things

wish after finery in clothes, “make up” for sexual purposes

good-heartedness

sentimentality

humility

world weariness

unsteadiness, uncertainty when alone

vanity in relationship to the outer world

instinctuality

feeling for things

subjectivity

turning away from the material, the essentials

richness of imagery, symbolic speech, and argumentation

prone to be influenced

timidity

naive trust in another

poor orientation, chiefly in space

sense for aesthetics

in Art: Impressionism

In Literature: lyric, tragic, mystic

In thinking: semi-conscious, not logical, not consistent, not able to draw conclusions

in case of obstacles: fatigue, giving up of goals

wish to be supported, maintained (“supported men”)

[These are also the same psychic characteristics of men.]

Masculine psychic characteristics in women:

masculine violence, activity

desire to seize

power striving

aggression

seek the partner, follow him, grip him, and besiege him

striving after the roll of the incubus

wish to give, make a present of, to be a “semen dispenser”

wish to adorn the other, to overwhelm with clothes, etc.

hard, obstinate, “intelligent man”

pride, haughtiness

vanity about facts, self-reliant

rational understanding for things

objectivity

exhibit essentials. seeking after the essentials

objective manner of speaking and argumentation

uninfluenceable

trust only in oneself

good orientation possibilities

ethically strong

In Art: Expressionism

In Literature: epics, satirical

conscious, logical

women who maintain men

 

 

 

I. Pathologic, extreme, and negative manifestations:

(a) Drive disorders

Hermaphroditism (according to Magnus Hirschfeld)

I. Disturbances of sexual differentiation:

1. Hermaphroditism genitalis: equal signs being present of feminine and masculine sexual organs in an individual

2. Hermaphroditism somaticus: androgyny.  The individual only has the gland of a sex but both sexual secondary characteristics (for example, next to the masculine sexual characteristics are feminine ones)

3. Hermaphoditismus psycho-sexualis: Pskychicus: Transvestitism:

a. Homosexuality: reversal of the sexual object: same sexual object choice

b. Metatropism (being like the opposite sex): Inversion of the sexual goal.  For example women who practice masculine aggression (wish to be Incubinatus); men who will subjugate themselves (succubinatus).  Reversal of aggression, etc.  Basically: men want to be women; women want to be men.

Inclination to Basedown illness, hyper thyroidism [hyperthyreosis], [exophthalmus]

Sadism

  1. Pederasty

  2. Sodomy

  3. Sadomasochism

  4. Metatropism (reversal of male and female roles)

  5. Fetishism

  6. Active (anal) homosexuality

 

 (b) Delinquency

1. Defrauding

2. Spying

3. Prostitution (street prostitute)

4. Pandering and procuring (pimp, fancy man)

Sexual murder,

Murder with robbery

(c) Suicide

Poison, gun

Rope, knife, razor, dagger, ax, hanging, slitting of vein or neck, Harakiri, etc.

II. Physiologic, normal socialized manifestations:

(1) Drive symptoms

1. Individual affection whose object is one specific person, family, religion, group, race, nation

2. Need: femininity, maternalism, passivity, submissiveness

1. activity, self-preservation: s+

2. passivity, devotion: s-

(2) Maturity, Adult

(a) personal love, physical love of individuals: h+

(b) love of mankind: h-

(a) Tendency to sadism, aggression, activity (s+)

(b) Tendency to civilization, generosity, humility, sacrifice, passivity,

masochism (s-)

(3). (a) Socialization

(b) Character

(a) h+: warm, tender: heart character, tenderness, motherly, wish to be given, impulse to dress, finery, make-up; sentimental, vanity, instinctive, feeling for the object, childish, trustful, confident, fashion consciousness, “feel of things,” subjectivity, lyric interest

(b) h-: culture impulse: love of nature and mankind

(a) s+: cold, hard character traits, violent activity, pleasure in attacking and assault, activity impulse, life impulse, undertakings impulse, pleasure in criticism, obstinacy, self-reliance, objectivity, reality sense, adaptation to environment, bloodthirstiness, pleasure in destroying, push and drive

(b) s-: devotion, compassion, sacrifice, wish to give, wish to protect, wish to adorn another, civilization impulse, protectiveness,

(4) Occupation, Professional field

h: occupation: homosexual, hermaphrodite (intersexual)

s: occupation: Sadist

(a)Chief Drive Need

tenderness, need to serve another, to subjugate oneself, passive femininity

violence, force, control, power strivings, masculinity

(b) Chief sense, reality perception

touch, seeing

depth of feeling, muscle feeling

(c) Professional object

own body or the body of another

(a) animal, (b) stone, iron, metal, machines, earth, wood

(d) (1) Professional means (2) professional activity

(a) ornament articles, decoration

(b) clothing: finery

(a) original tool: ax, cleaver, sharp hoe, chisel, hammer, knife, drill, whip

(b) great muscularity

(e) Professional place or location

bathhouse, beach, seashore, barber shop, hairdresser’s, restaurant, public house, theater, circus, hatter’s shop, bordello

(a) barn, cowshed, butcher block, zoological gardens, animal breeding place, arena, forest, mountain, mines

(b)  operation room, dissection room

(f) Occupation solutions: Occupation, Professional field Socialization in a profession, occupation

male hairdresser, female hairdresser, bath employee, servant profession, hotel keeper, waiter, confectioner, cook, baker, washer man, butler, employee in clothing business, dress designer, waiter, hotel manager, fashion model, lingerie manufacturer, serving occupations in general, manual labor, model, dancer, ballet dancer, singer, performer, artist

farm and forest worker, animal tamer, masseur, manicurist, pedicurist, slaughterer, hangman, mason, miner, roadworker, driver, wrestler, gym teacher, butcher, operation nurse, executioner, stone cutter, sculpturer, carrier, waggoner, veterinarian, chauffeur, hunter, soldier, farmer, zoo keeper, surgical nurse, blacksmith, boxer, athlete, fencer, policeman, bull-fighter, automobile driver, occupations involving necessary mutilations and/or destruction, and infliction of pain, animal slaughter man

Sadism:

a. work with ball, knife, scissors, shears, drill, tweezers: butcher, cutler, scissors user, shears user, laborer, grinder, manicurist, pedicurist, executioner, operation nurse

b. work with an ax: wood carver, timber merchant, forester, carpenter

c. work with pickax: stone cutter, street worker, grave digger, sewer cleaner as well as an engineer who supervises such work

d. work with chisel and hammer: sculpturer (wood or stone), gravestone maker

e. work with a whip in hand (work with animals): driver, groom for animals, trainer of wild beasts, employee in an animal zoo [in sublimated form: veterinarian, protector of animals]

f. sport professions: wrestler, boxer, masseur, rifleman, soldier, etc.

g. handling of machines: chauffeur, tractor driver, rifle man, soldier, etc.

Metatropism in Occupations

Men (who want to be women):

Occupations in which the wish for costumes can be satisfied:  ladies’ fashion salon, laundry, scarf maker (often manufacturer of ready-made men’s clothes)

Fashion designer for women’s clothing, often for men’s designer of clothes

Artist occupations: female impersonator, “soprano singer” in women’s clothing

Dance occupations: ballet, dance artist

Textile areas: weaver, needlework, embroidery, carpet maker, clothing store, fashion ware store, chiefly for women, furrier’s trade, etc.

men and women hairdressers

employee in bath houses, swimming master, servant, chamber servant, formerly serving personal, nursemaid, waiter, boarding house proprietor, hotel keeper

Confectioner’s shop, seller of confections on the street or in a stand, cook, licorice maker

Sciences: mathematics, musical science, gynecologist

Literature:  lyric poetry art, sentimental poetry

spy (with additional paranoid tendencies: auditory), counterspy

Women (who want to be men):

Occupations in which one can wear masculine uniforms: letter carrier (during wars), guard, conductor, theater aisle guide in movie houses and theaters, chauffeur, horse carriage driver

Artist occupations: men impersonator, animal trainer; singer: alto singer

Dancing occupations: ballet, dance artist

Sports occupations: gym teacher, fencing master, trainer, coach, swim instructor, professional wrestler, boxer, masseur, etc.

Manicurist, pedicurist: employee in a public bathhouse

III. Socially Positive manifestations:

Drive Symptoms

 

Sublimation

1. Collective affection whose object is all of humanity

2. Cultural needs

3. Humanitarian Ideas

Culture in general, Literature and literary arts in particular, spiritual love of humanity,  a Humanist

1. Collective generosity

2. Collective self-sacrificing

3. Collective humility

4. Trend toward civilization in general

5. Love of technology in particular

6. Humane ethics

Technical Civilization (state)

Occupations

musician, lyric poet, gynecologist, physician for the skin (dermatologists) and for sexual illnesses (sexual pathology)

surgeon, pathologist-anatomist, dentist, construction engineer, dissector, veterinary surgeon

 

 

The Paroxysmal Drive

 

II.      The Paroxysmal Vector (P): This describes the area of emotional control.

[See Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice forgreater details.]

 

          e factor (pictures of epileptics in their control stage)  describing the subject’s way of dealing with aggressive, hostile emotions (the s factor area)

 

          hy factor (pictures of hysterics) indicating the way a person deals with his tender emotions (the h factor area)

 

The e+ Factor

(e = epileptic)

(Achtnich: Social Aspect: SH = Readiness to help;

need to do good, to take responsibility for one’s fellow human being,

 to help, to heal, and to care for)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

          The epileptic belongs to the Paroxysmal Drive, or Vector [also called Startle or Surprise Drive].  Paroxysmal means that there is a periodic pattern of the accumulation of energy that builds to a climax as in a fever and then suddenly discharges.  The pictures of the epileptics in the Szondi Test are those who are in the control stage of epilepsy: the accumulation and restraint of discharge of energy.  The energy being controlled is the aggressive energy from the sadism need (s+).  

          Szondi labels the epileptic in this control stage Abel after the brother killed by Cain in Genesis in the Old Testament of the Bible.  Cain exhibits freely the e- need, which is the rejection of emotional control of the sadism (s+) need.  Cain was a murdered out of passion.  Abel and Cain are two sides of the same coin: both feel the same need to accumulate their aggressive energy and then to suddenly discharge it, often surprising and startling those around them.   Later in his work, Szondi used Moses as the model for the e+ need instead because Moses was a Cain in his youth and murdered out of anger an Egyptian.

          The epileptic fit is the model for this need in the paroxysmal drive.

          The basic characteristics for the e+ epileptic in the control stage are being overly good, helpful, and religious.  He or she is greatly concerned about good and evil: ethical matters.  There is however something unauthentic about the goodness and helpfulness since these qualities may be a reaction formation—a reversal of the original desire to harm and even to kill the other person.

The Paroxysmal Drive is representative of the superego.  Particularly in the epileptic need is the prohibition of  “Thou shall not kill” operative.

          The person who chooses e plus identifies himself or herself with the strict need to control the discharge of the rough and aggressive feelings emanating from the sadism need.  This control indicates an active superego.  The person is deeply concerned with questions of good and evil and of justice and injustice.  Religion appeals to the e plus person because of the ethical concerns of religion.

          If more than the average numbers of choices [three] occur, then the e plus person most likely will lean toward a reactive and compulsive control of aggressive needs.  The e plus person is highly moralistic, principled, and critical, suffering greatly from guilt over any aggressive acts committed.  Whereas the s minus person transforms his or her aggressive need into mental and sublimated activities, the e plus person tries to suppress or repress the aggression and rough emotions of anger, jealousy, hate, desire for revenge, and intolerance.  The e plus need is closely related to the k need since k minus is associated with repression and k plus/minus is indicative of compulsiveness.   The m minus—an indication of mania—showing an active display of aggression is the opposite to the e plus’s strict control of rough emotions.

          The e plus in normal individuals—those without any serious pathology—are often in occupations and professions concerned with helping others.  Achtnich has many examples of these occupations.

          There is a legend that a king who had heard about the miracles performed by Moses wanted a portrait made of him.   When the king saw the portrait, he was astounded: Moses’ face portrayed brutality, cruelty, greediness, and ambition.  When Moses appeared in his court, the portrait was seen to be true.  Moses explained that he indeed has all these characteristics in his youth [he was a Cain].  But his great goodness and strength were from his overcoming the evil within himself [thus becoming an Abel].

          Szondi lists the characteristics of having a conscience, tolerance, desire to do good, readiness to help, desire to heal, and having a fear of God.

          The e plus character can only really be understood when the hy need is considered.  See the book by Szondi, Moser, and Webb for details on this.

          The e plus person’s thinking and behavior stands in close relationship to a social need.   The e plus person deals with a single person; the e minus person who uses his drive constructively concerns himself or herself with the group: humanity’s, not the individual’s, need. 

          The not genuine nature of e plus persons can show up as being overprotective, overly moralistic, extreme scruples, authoritarian beliefs, excessive sense of feeling responsible and need to sacrifice, excessive piousness or bigotry, and excessive inhibition of aggression so that one doesn’t dispute or conflict with others.   Achtnich goes into details about this unbearable Able-type.

          One must constantly remember that behind an Able stands the Cain.  Moses is the example of this.   The Cain can appear on the front stage.   Often murders of passion occur this way.   The good doctor who becomes a murderer, for example.   Stalin was a priest in his youth (an Abel) later was a mass murderer (a Cain).

          The basic temperament of the e plus is warm, affectionate, and impulsive; however, these may hide behind a cold exterior because the person is trying to master his emotional discharge.   The e plus person is not subtle—he or she does not deal well with gray situations—consequently, he or she is often brutal in his or her decisions or directness.   The e plus person has an absolute view.   He or she can be frank and loyal.   Authenticity and clarity are loved.   Subtleties are despised.

          Her ambition is firm and persevering.  She can be patient and meticulous because she has a taste for details and a concern for organization.   She makes plans and is concerned about use of her time and efforts.

          Since the e plus person is dominated by extremes, he or she seeks for a balance.

          The e plus person is by nature good, mild, kind, tolerant, and charitable and always seeks the truth. His nature can push him to mysticism (also true of p minus).  He needs to believe in something and to appease revolts. 

          In all, one would rarely find the e plus person among the disrupters of society or as delinquents. 

         

Occupations Satisfying the e+ Need

[Based on Martin Achtnich’s work in Der Berufsbilder-Test]

 

          In his book Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl in Lieb, Freudschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod [Fate Analysis: Choice in Love, Friendship, Occupation, Illness and Death], Szondi establishes that there are four parts involved in one’s choice of an occupation:

          The activity, or function,

          The means or working tool,

          The occupation or professional object/material/goal

          The place.

          For instance: a doctor’s activities are to heal and to look after; the means are willingness to help, medications, health articles and equipment, preventative measures, and speech; the professional objects are the body and spirit of the ill persons and also animals and plants; the places are the hospital, first-aid stations, accident wards, veterinarian hospitals, and plants’ sanctuaries [arboretums].

          In his Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupations Pictures Test] manual, Martin Achtnich indicates that each choice of an occupation or job involves two needs: the first need is primary and the second is subordinate but important too.  There can be more than two needs involved in one’s choice of an occupation, but Achtnich concentrates on the two most important ones.  In the case of a doctor, the primary need is e+ [Szondi’s Epileptic Circle of the Abel character; in Achtnich’s analysis, Social: readiness to help, to look after], and the secondary need is e- [Szondi’s Epileptic Circle of the constructive Cain character; Achtnich calls this the social need: energy, dynamic, movement, urge for activity].

          The activity, or function, presented by Achtnich offers quick insights into the working of a need. The primary functions for a doctor are to heal and to counsel (e+), and the secondary functions are to take responsibility and to be enterprising (e-).

  

The social attitude or outlook is divided into two parts: the first part consists of: to heal, readiness to help, and to be sympathetic.  [In Szondi: e+ = Abel or Moses character; also e+ hy-]

 

          The functions for e+ [social need: to heal, to be sympathetic, and to look after] are:

[1]     to heal, to look after (physician, physical therapist, nurse, occupations in health organizations or those dealing with accidents, veterinarian, animal nurse)

[2]     to help, to take care of, to provide for, to encourage, to soothe, to console, to comfort, to support (nursing occupations, welfare worker, home-care worker, health teacher, helper in development of children, care worker for children and young adolescents, midwife)

[3]     to pray, to preach, to have a religious outlook (parson, rector, priest, preacher, sexton, missionary)

[4]     to guide, to lead, to educate, to aid (teacher, home-care worker, home tutor, health teacher, kindergarten teacher)

[5]     to advise, to mediate (counselor, advisor about life’s problems, occupation counselor, psychologist, marriage counselor, social worker, mediator)

[6]     to protect, to secure (technicians in rescue work, fireman [e+ and e-])

[7]     to rescue (rescue occupations [e+ and e-])

[8]     to foster social service (social service occupations, social worker [for world organizations, for example])

[9]     to let live and grow, to preserve (gardener, farmer, forester, forest warden, biologist, zoologist—all employed in protecting nature)

[10]   to change places only in connection to the previous items [1-9] and also in service of a social or cultural goal

 

The e- Factor

(e = epileptic)

(Achtnich: Social Aspect: SE = mental energy, dynamic, courageous, go-getter

striving for independence, movement need, need to change places; this is the Cain that uses his or her high energy constructively)

 

          Abel, the good brother murdered, represents the e plus need; Cain, filled with jealousy, anger, hate, and rage, represents the evil brother who kills and is marked by God for his sin.  Both Able and Cain are two sides of the same coin.  The Paroxysmal drive is also called the Startle or Surprise drive because these two opposites may switch, and this shocks people.  Many times a killer becomes religious—an Abel when in prison.  Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer of young men, became religious in prison.

          Whether an Abel or a Cain, or a Moses, the person has the need to control emotions, specifically the aggression and rough emotions of the s plus need.

The person selecting e minus rejects identification with the epileptic in the strict control stage of e plus. The e minus persons does not wish to control their aggressive emotions and the hate, anger, jealousy, rage, envy, revenge, and intolerance that is building inside of them.  As the state of tension builds in the s plus need, the e minus persons do not exert emotional control over the aggression and rough emotions; therefore, as a boiling kettle must let off steam, they will have a sudden emotional outburst that startles those around them.  A child—and children have little emotional control—who has a temper tantrum is a model of this explosive behavior.  When the emotional outburst ends, the e minus need will turn into an e with a zero, thus indicating the release of the tension.  Of course, the epileptic fit is the model for this need in the paroxysmal drive.  After the emotional outburst, some Cains will turn into the Abel stage and present the e plus response on the Szondi test.   These sudden changes are typical of the paroxysmal drive.

          Absent will be ethical concerns for the e minus persons.  Their superego is lax unlike the strict superego of the e plus individuals.  However, the e minus persons will be constantly on the lookout for any injustices done to them, even when there is little real substance to a so-called injury or insult.  In this way, paradoxically, the e minus persons are very dependent on others, just as dependent as the h plus people who need others’ love.  As always, the hy selection will greatly influence the final outcome in the paroxysmal drive.

          The e minus persons will tend to live out their id impulses and be restless.  Their desire for movement and change is prominent. 

          The e minus individuals will be among the antisocial from vagabonds to murders out of passion.  They tend to be among the lower occupations demanding physical work.  But as Achtnich has pointed out, they can be leaders with their tremendous energy when they use it constructively.  Szondi indicates that the Cain makes up one fifth of the general population.  The needs of s plus and m minus are prominent with the antisocial and criminal e minus individuals. The m minus—an indication of mania—shows an active display of aggression and is the opposite to the e plus’s strict control of rough emotions.

          Whereas the e plus persons are prone to compulsions, the e minus ones, living out their aggressions, will not be compulsive.   Intellectuals sometimes have an e minus response; in this case, they will be aggressive in their activities.

          Szondi lists the strivings of e minus individuals as being without a conscience, intolerant, wishing to do evil, having joy in others’ suffering, desiring to wound others, and being without fear of God—all these are opposite to those of the e plus persons.

          Without the strict emotional control exhibited by the e plus, the e minus individuals will be impulsive, unstable, and even violent out of the frustration of the rising tension in the s plus need.  The original need to kill—which is the foundation of the e need—is turned into hate, jealousy, envy, anger, rage, intolerance, and brutality.  Completely absent are pity and compassion, for they delight in the suffering and misfortunes of others.

          These e minus individuals do not concern themselves with questions of good and evil; they lack a moral conscience.  Among them are murders out of passion, alcoholics, and certain epileptics. 

          In other cases, the e minus persons are prominent in revolutions for some grand cause of religion, race, patriotism, or family and bring all their excesses to these causes.  They fight against all the injustices of men and organizations.   They are the prominent ones in the mob that do the most savage and animalistic acts.  These same individuals can use the same violent energy for the good of humankind.  Moses is a model for this.

          When the e minus individuals use their energy constructively, they are greatly treasured in the work place.   Their restless energy causes things to happen.  There is always something explosive and choleric about these individuals.  They take risks and are constantly surprising people.  They will fight against injustices in society with fervor.  Unlike the s plus individuals who use muscle power, the e minus ones use their mental and emotional powers to obtain results.  The e minus persons fight for the good of the group, not the individual as does the e plus people. 

          Szondi was particularly interested in the Cains, Abels, and Moses of this world and wrote a couple of books about them besides all his comments in his other books.

 

Occupations Satisfying the e- Need

[Based on Martin Achtnich’s work in Der Berufsbilder-Test]

 

          In his book Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl in Lieb, Freudschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod [Fate Analysis: Choice in Love, Friendship, Occupation, Illness and Death], Szondi establishes that there are four parts involved in one’s choice of an occupation:

          The activity, or function,

          The means or working tool,

          The occupation or professional object/material/goal

          The place.

          For instance: a pilot’s activities are to travel and to fly; the means are airplanes; the professional objects are movement, speed, changing places, and airplanes; the places are airplanes.

          In his Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupations Pictures Test] manual, Martin Achtnich indicates that each choice of an occupation or job involves two needs: the first need is primary and the second is subordinate but important too.  There can be more than two needs involved in one’s choice of an occupation, but Achtnich concentrates on the two most important ones.  In the case of a pilot, the primary need is e- [Szondi’s Epileptic Circle of the constructive Cain character; Achtnich calls this the social need: energy, dynamic, movement, urge for activity], and the secondary need is hy+ [Szondi’s hysteria; Achtnich calls this the needs to perform, to show, to have an aesthetic appreciation].

          The activity, or function, presented by Achtnich offers quick insights into the working of a need. The primary functions for a pilot are to fly, to travel, to take risks, to do dangerous things, and to undertake responsibility for others and to risk oneself (e-), and the secondary functions are to be something out of the ordinary, to create wonder, and to wear a uniform  (hy+). 

 

          The social attitude or outlook is divided into two parts.  The first part e+ has been covered.   The second part consists of: energy, dynamic, movement, thirst for doing.  [In Szondi: e- = The Cain character; also e- hy+] [In Szondi: e- = Cain character, but these occupations portray the possible constructive uses of aggressive, mental energy in an occupation or activity.]

 

          The functions of constructive e- are:

[1]     to risk, to venture, to do dangerous things (expedition leader, researcher on nature, helper during a catastrophe, acrobat)

[2]     to travel, to drive, to fly (pilot, astronaut, naval captain, taxi driver, locomotive driver, transport occupations, representative in outside work, conductor, stewardess on a railroad or airline )

[3]     to go, to run, to race, to jump, to do gymnastics, to dance (delivery occupations, letter carrier, sports figures involved in running, jumping, turning, springing, riding-of-horses instructor, dance instructor)

[4]     to climb, to descend (mountain climber leader, pilot, elevator operator, diver for hire, radio antenna fitter on towers, conductor on a mountain railway—all these occupations involve rising and descending)

[5]     to be active, to be industrious, to hustle, to participate in varied activities, which are always bound with continued surprises (travel guide, researcher group leader, helper in emergencies, people standing by for emergencies [police, firemen], border patrol workers)

[6]     to let motors run, to set machines in motion, to start into turning motions (machinists, truck drivers, factory workers, mechanics)

[7]     to overcome nature’s powers [to research nature’s powers = Factor G (p in Szondi)]:

          [7a]   Fire: to light it, to extinguish it, to burn up something with it, to heat with it, to anneal with it, to weld with it, to forge with it (stoker or fireman on a ship, foundry worker, baker, fire oil worker, fireman, blacksmith, welder—all these deal with fire and sparks)

          [7b]    Electricity: to electrify with it (electrician, electrical engineer, worker with high tension wires, workers with electricity)

          [7c]     Atom Power, Sun’s Power (knowledgeable workers for atom power and sun’s energy)

          [7d]    Wind Power, Aerodynamics (aerodynamic engineer, meteorologist [working with wind power])

          [7e]     Earth Power (geologist, geographer, construction engineer, volcano specialist—all these have to do with the power of the earth)

          [7f]     Water Power (construction engineer, tilling-of-land engineer, oceanographer—all have to do with the power of water)

[8]     to render resistance, to rebel, to revolt, to live out emotional excitement in an occupation, to be Iimpulsive (occupations which require courage for achieving new goals, a revolutionary, a hero, politician)

[9]     to take jurisdiction over, to defend, to condemn, to accuse, to punish (lawyer, defense lawyer, judge, prosecutor, police person, criminologist)

10]    to undertake responsibility and risk for oneself and others, to lead others, to cope with situations, to be driven to be independent (authority position [not in the sense of conquering but of leading], manager, superintendent, entrepreneur, wholesale merchant leader, teacher, politician)

 

Achtnich: Interpretation of the Negative Reaction e [-SH or -SE]

 

Social Aspect: Achtnich has two parts to the Social Attitude; Szondi only has one.

 

Defended Factor

native, original

Factor need  

the Defense directs

itself against

the working out

of the Defense and

Reaction formation

-SH [e+]         

To look out for;  

To help

social readiness

to help

the social helping

society

opposition    

-SE [e-]           

Energy

readiness to take

risks   

the undertaking of

great risks

protection need;

anxiousness

 

            In the next tables are the complete defense and the reversion for the SH [e+] and SE [e-] factors.

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-SH [e+] for the helping social attitude of the Abel or

Moses type

One turns away from each chance to be helpful: “Each person should care for himself or herself.” Emphasis on his own impulse for independence: “I need no help.”  One seeks independence in occupations where one will only rely on oneself.

 

 

 

 

One experiences disillusionment when dealing with others. Because of one’s own bad conscience, one feels resentments: these are reaction formations based on conscience conflicts.  One seeks occupations that have to do with justice and uprightness.  One applies oneself to occupation choices involving living beings (for example, animals) as objects in order to ensure justice for them.

 

 

Note: The e- of Achtnich shows pictures of people taking risks—race drivers, for example—who actually are representative of the e- (the Cain) of Szondi.   This negative reaction to e- is a negation of a negation (e-).

 

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-SE [e-] for the social attitude of being energetic: the constructive Cain   

One shies away from risky and dangerous occupations.  One lacks the dynamic thirst for activity and initiative.  One declines occupations that involve movement; one feels one must love one place and remain there.

One’s own original thirst for activity is thwarted.  One now occupies oneself with the theoretical with energy and drive without taking any risks of one’s own.

 

The e 0 Factor

(e = epileptic)

(0 = open)

 

          The open e response indicates that there is no tension in controlling one’s emotions; this means that emotions can be discharged easily.  The open e response can also mean that there has been a discharge of aggressive and rough emotions such as after an emotional outburst or epileptic fit.  If one continually gives the open e, this means that the aggression is discharged steadily.   The discharge can be normal or pathological.

          If the open e occurs as part of a changing pattern—going from e plus or e minus or e plus-minus to open e, then this means a paroxysmal event has occurred.  Manic persons who are continually discharging aggression have the open e response. 

         

The hy Factor

(hy = hysteria)

(Achtnich: Need to Show, Representation Need, Aesthetic Sense)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

The hy+ Factor

(hy = hysteria)

 

          The epileptic need is to control the strong emotions of s plus; the hysteric need is to control the tender emotions as described in the h plus need.  Both the hysteric and the epileptic surprise or startle.   The hysteric, unlike the epileptic, must have an audience.  [If there is a combination of e need with hy plus, then the epileptic’s need will be shown.]

Both the epileptic and hysteric have disturbances in the control of emotions.

          Whereas the epileptic is concerned with ethical questions—that is, one’s inner control of good and evil—the hysteric is concerned with moral questions: does one conform to the dictates of society?  Both are showing the influence of the superego.    Particularly in the hysteric need is the prohibition of incest operative.

          Since the emotions by hy plus individuals are based on the finer emotions of h plus need, then the explosive outbursts—as of an actor on a stage—is of a lesser quantity and quality than that of the epileptic who is expressing his violent emotions of s plus.  Graphologists have long considered that one who has light pressure—one of the main graphic characteristics of hy plus—has an outburst and then quickly forgets it.   The epileptic, however, has high pressure, and when he or she has an emotional episode, the event is long remembered.  The epileptic damns up the anger, jealousy, or other strong emotion; the hysteric will not.  Otto Preminger, the famous movie director, was famous for his tyrannical outbursts on the movie set but quickly forgot the event and quickly thereafter was best friends with the one who was the target of his emotions.

          On the primitive animalistic level, there is a movement storm by an animal to escape a predator: a bug caught in a sink by a human runs in any direction frantically.  The hy plus person’s emotional outburst involving much body movement is enacting this movement storm.  The hy minus, when confronted with danger, likes to play dead—a defense mechanism of animals when being attacked by a predator.  The turtle’s action when attacked by a predator is an example.

          The hysteric at the Freudian level of partial drives is displaying the exhibitionistic need.  The hy plus need, however, takes on a broad connotation and refers to anyone who exhibits—thus actually displays—his or her emotional state to those in the environment.  This is certainly a universal need.  When someone positively responds to the picture of a hysteric in the Szondi Test, he or she is indicating the intensity and quality of this exhibitionistic need.  Achtnich calls this need the need to show oneself.  If one responds negatively to the hysteric’s picture in the Szondi Test, this also indicates that the exhibitionist need exists but is held back. 

          People who respond positively to the pictures of hysterics in the Szondi Test indicate that they identify with the need to exhibit their emotions in some tangible way.  Whether the person will demonstrate this need in a positive way will depend on the reactions for the other needs.

          Unlike the epileptic who has depth and intensity of emotions, the hy plus has little emotional depth.  The emotions that are the most shallow can easily be expressed.  The hy plus person, thus, expresses emotions easily and has a shallow emotional life.  All this is characteristic of the light pressure writer.  

          Individuals who respond with hy plus must have an audience.   They, therefore, like situations where they are the center of attention.  Professional actors, performers of all kinds including sports figures, politicians, teachers, and professors—all on the stage and in the limelight—are favorite occupations for hy plus individuals. 

          Conversion hysteria—where the parts of the body are used in an unusual way before another because of some emotional disturbance—is one pathological possibility for the hy plus person.  Hypochondria and anxiety hysteria—private kinds of pathology—belong to the realm of the hy minus individual.  Here the emotions are denied outward expression as is not so for hy plus. 

          The hy plus person carefully assesses the audience and situation before displaying his or her emotional state.  And part of this assessment is what is to one’s advantage?  The hy plus individual loves to please, is careful to sustain interest of the viewers, and, above all, to astound the persons with his or her beauty or handsomeness or cleverness.  He or she loves to seduce and to possess others. 

          Money is of great interest—although not discussed—because having money gives the hy plus person power to live out her or her need and not to depend on others.

          The hy plus individuals want success, the taste of glory, recognition, and approbation.  They are, thus, highly ambitious in their goals and are extremely adroit in attaining them. They esteem those who have reached high social positions and those who are more resourceful and clever than they are. 

          The hy plus person is lively in whatever is done, dashing, charming, and even ironic in order to be clever. 

          Unlike the e plus individual who follows the spirit of the law, the hy plus person holds more to the letter than the spirit of the law.  He or she is hurt less deeply by the shocks and traumas of life than the epileptic.  The hysteric adapts to the circumstances and searches for some compromise to extract him or her out of a difficult situation. 

          All these positive qualities can become negative if the hy plus individual exaggerates this need for attention.  The person then becomes openly egotistical; his or her morality is too subtle in service of his or her own personal interest; his behavior is corrupted.  In his or her wish to achieve goals, he or she becomes critical of others and plays any role in order to succeed at any price. 

          Szondi states that the hy plus need can make humans shameless exhibitionists and destroyers of all shame and disgust boundaries.  They place the need to show themselves in the show window of their being.  They may enter into an apparent goalless movement storm in order to attain their hidden drive goal of obtaining love and being rescued.  They produce in times of conflict shivering movements, tics, running here and there, and going up and down.  Out of anxiety, their whole body shakes.   They bring licentiousness and uninhibitedness into the world.  They are the shameless.

          In modern terms, the hy plus person loves the slogans: “Just do it.”  “No Limits.”  In the sixties, the favored motto was “Do your own thing.”

 

Occupations Satisfying the hy Need

 

          In his book Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl in Lieb, Freudschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod [Fate Analysis: Choice in Love, Friendship, Occupation, Illness and Death], Szondi establishes that there are four parts involved in one’s choice of an occupation:

          The activity, or function,

          The means or working tool,

          The occupation or professional object/material/goal

          The place.

          For instance: a cameraman director’s activities are to film and to represent something artistically; the means are film and camera, decoration accessories, lasting reactions from the public; the professional objects are the film, movie goer, the eventful; the places are working studio and any place outside.

          In his Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupations Pictures Test] manual, Martin Achtnich indicates that each choice of an occupation or job involves two needs: the first need is primary and the second is subordinate but important too.  There can be more than two needs involved in one’s choice of an occupation, but Achtnich concentrates on the two most important ones.  In the case of a cameraman, the primary need is hy+ [in Achtnich’s analysis, the need to show, to perform, to use aesthetic sense], and the secondary need is e- [Szondi’s Epileptic Circle of the Cain character; Achtnich calls this the social need of a constructive Cain character: energy, dynamics, movement, thirst for doing].  And a film director needs lots of energy to direct a movie.

          The activity, or function, presented by Achtnich offers quick insights into the working of a need. 

 

The functions for hy+ [to show, to perform, to have an aesthetic sense] are:

[1]     to show, to display, such as one’s beauty, strength, goodness, cleverness, efficiency, or a work product that is one’s alone (dancer, model, artist, one engaged in sports, occupations in which one wears a uniform [also in sports, this is true] [movement is part of this] [the means for a dancer, for example, are body, beauty, movement, body achievement, a uniform])

[2]     to perform or to shape artistically (performer, painter of pictures, sculpturer, musician, conductor, actor, artist)

[3]     to deliver a speech or talk, to recite, to appear as a speaker or a singer, to act, to publish, to demonstrate (politician, professor, novelist, journalist, speaker)

[4]     to stand in the footlights in a public appearance about oneself, others, or news, to represent (journalist, reporter, editor, politician)

[5]     to propagandize, to find fault with, to expose, to bring forward, to make known, to enlist, to entice (propaganda and advertising worker, demonstrator of something, salesperson, trainer of salespersons, art dealer)

[6]     to make a person beautiful or handsome, to make attractive, to make up, to dress (model occupation, beautician, cosmetologist, fashion designer)

[7]     to photograph, to film (photographer, film director, cameraman)

[8]     to adorn, to decorate, to beautify, to gild or to glitter, to ornament, to polish, to varnish, to paint (show window decorator, gilder [to decorate with gold], decoration occupation, painter, handwork with aesthetic wrapping paper)

[9]     to draw, to paint, to draw graphically, to make handicrafts, to satisfy aesthetic needs (handicraft worker, goldsmith, silversmith, graphic artist, ceramics painter, designer, restaurant keeper, interior decorator, creator of a newspaper or column on art)

[10]   to devote oneself to beautiful persons or things, to look at and to admire beautiful and handsome persons or things (occupation in which one can occupy oneself with beautiful things)

          [Note: In hysteria, the movement storm is a typical characteristic; therefore, movement—as with a dancer—is equally part of hysteria as it is with the epilepsy.]

 

The hy- Factor

(hy = hysteria)

 

          When people negatively respond to the picture of hysterics in the Szondi Test, they are counter-identifying and rejecting the exhibitionistic display of emotions portrayed by the hysteric.   The hy minus individuals will control the display of the finer emotions of h plus.  The narcissistic and exhibitionistic needs are controlled by hy minus persons.  This very control and blocking from showing emotions lead to an intense emotional life.  This is an obvious contrast to the superficial and shallow emotional life of the hy plus individuals. 

Like the e plus persons, the hy minus with this control of emotions indicates a healthy superego. 

          The hy minus individuals, because of the blocking of emotions within, have a rich and vivid fantasy life, often daydream, and have access to the prelogical thinking of a child.  Emotions not acted out become felt as an inner, subjective experience.

          Again, it is important to remember, as Susan Deri often emphasizes, that a minus response does not mean that the person does not have this hy need.  The need is just as strong—if not stronger because of not being acted out—than the hy plus responses.  Needs not acted out become even more significant in the people’s lives.

          If the negative responses are loaded—that is, more than three—then the exhibitionistic need is acted out but in some distorted fashion.  Homosexuality (many times latent but felt subjectively), anxiety hysteria, diffuse anxiety, phobia, and hypochondria are the leading nervous problems.   The hy plus individuals never have anxieties like this because they act out their emotions even if in disguised forms of conversion hysteria.  The hy is the most common indicator of anxiety in the test.

          Individuals who have hy minus responses are naturally discrete and modest and possess humility.

          Because of a holding back of the expression of finer emotions, the imagination is intensified.  One can live in one’s dreams and have premonitions.  Thus, one can experience in these ways what is not open to one in reality. On the other hand, being discrete, secret, full of tact and gentleness, the hy minus persons do not dare to be themselves, hide their sensitivity and tenderness—because being perceived as weaknesses—and thus lower their self-esteem.  Fearful and inhibited from social contacts, these hy minus individuals try not to attract attention and to mold themselves to the morality imposed by society and repress their own desires.

          Other characteristics of hy minus are faint-heartedness, timidity, shyness, bashfulness, feeling of shame, clumsiness, awkwardness, puzzlement, confusion, self-consciousness in stepping into the limelight, hiding oneself, concealing, holding oneself back overall, lacking self-confidence.

          They have deep and profound emotions but do not dare to live them out.  At the moments when emotions could be lived out, a paralysis of some kind—a playing dead—of speech, thought, feelings, or memory occurs.  These emotions can however be lived in a fictional world.   The hy need is especially adapted to the realm of art, particularly dramatic art. 

          Szondi writes about the illnesses in wartime that belong to the hy minus need.  These are the immobilization phenomena: the hysterical incapability to go, to stand, to speak, and to think.  These phenomena go back to the primitive, animalistic reaction of playing dead and hiding.

          The reactions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when becoming conscious of their sin of eating of the tree of knowledge, were to hide and to feel shame.   The same reactions prevail today in the hy minus individuals.

 

Achtnich: Interpretation of the Negative Reaction: hy-

 

Defended Factor

native, original

Factor need

the Defense directs

itself against

the working out

of the Defense and

Reaction formation

-Z [hy-]

Show Need   

need to show

oneself

drive to show

oneself;

exhibitionism

shame, to want to

hide oneself

 

 

            In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for Z [hy] factor.

 

Minus factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-Z [hy-]           

The need to show oneself is not present or cannot be lived out.  Inhibition and shame reactions are present, and these can harm one’s occupational success.  The person will not or cannot show his or her work, cannot step forth, and hides his or her light under a bushel basket.  Eventually one recognizes—if there is no aesthetic-artistic talent present—that one cannot consider an occupation that requires one to show oneself or one’s work.

Possibly also the response of the defense of musicians and “the beautiful people.”

Occupations are chosen in which the person does not put himself or herself in the position of stepping into the limelight.  The person must remain in the background, not be conspicuous, and remain anonymous.  One does not choose individualistic professions, which emphasize one’s own person in which one must exhibit oneself.  However, one can choose occupations in which something is produced and that can be shown: one seeks any art form that can be brought forth to be shown.

 

The hy 0 Factor

(hy = hysteria)

 

          The zero response indicates that the hy need to show oneself or one’s work is being lived out in some way.

The hy need is more easily lived out than other needs; therefore, the changes in the hy need can appear quite frequently as the situation of the person changes.

Even if the open hy is a constant response over a period of time, one cannot know exactly how the exhibitionistic need is being lived out, whether in normal or pathological ways.  One fact is certain: persons with an open, a zero, response do not have great control over their emotions and show them to others almost immediately.   This showing of emotions is often recognized and causes one to state that this is a hysterical type of person. 

In pathology, the zero response appears in manic individuals and in the antisocial who are acting out their needs.  Criminals and psychopaths also act out their needs without emotional control.  Compulsive neurotics can also give this response because they act out their needs in compulsive rituals and ceremonies.

Since the hy need is acted out, the open hy response is less frequent among those with anxiety hysteria.

          In sum, the open hy response indicates a discharge of the tender affects (h need) in any kind of hysterical act or even a fit.  This response also indicates a weakness in the moral censor.  The person is indifferent to the rules of society.  If e plus or minus response is given, then the strong emotions are acted out, and one displays one’s goodness or badness.

 

Sixteen Combinations for the Paroxysmal Vector

[See Szondi, Moser, and Webb book for detailed analyses.]

[Extract from L. Szondi, Experimental Diagnostics of Drives, English translation by Gertrude Aull]

 

P1  =          - 0               Sporadic anxiety states with aggression

P2  =          - -                Panic, ”playing dead”

P3  =          +/- -           Hysteroid anxiety and apprehensiveness

P4  =          + 0              Fears, clearly focused

P5  =          0 -               Paranoid fears

P6  =          0 +/-          Discomfort with whining

P7  =          + +             High emotionality, stormy feelings

P8  =          0 +              Outbursts of rage exhibited

P9  =          0 0              Serene moods, low after excitement

P10 =         +/- 0          Anxiety with compulsive impulses and inhibition

P11 =         - +/-           Crude affectivity of a shamefaced and inhibited “Cain”

P12 =         + +/-          A self-exhibiting “Abel”

P13 =         +/- +          A converted “Cain”

P14 =         +/- +/-      Ethical dilemmas, “Abel” in fight with “Cain”

P15 =         - +               The pure Cain

P16 =         + -               The pure Abel

 

Szondi: Transformation of the Apparent Forms of Drive Factors:

Personality Vicissitudes Related to the Eight Drive Needs

 

Drive Vectors

[Some of these ideas are from pathoanalysis.]

 

P

Paroxysmal Drive: Ethics drive; Emotional Discharge, Surprise Drive

 

      The Paroxysmal (P) and Schizophrenic (Sch) vectors are called central vectors and express a more inner activity: what happens inside.  They express the position of the subject on the instinctual needs, which emanate from the other two vectors ( S and C).  They indicate the way in which the instinctual movements are to be handled and worked through by the subject on a more interiorized mode.  By these central instinctual tendencies, the subject is protected against the peripheral instinctual dangers.

      Szondi designs the vector P as a defense mechanism against the external dangers on the one hand and the interior dangers on the other.  It informs us on the components of emotional control.  This corresponds somehow to the activity of the Super Ego.

      It is the relationship with the other, which is concerned.  It shows one’s capacity to accept the other as an individual, either by the conscience of guilt (e) or by what can compromise the relation with others  by the need (hy): a) to impress and to be admired by the others or to shamelessly exhibit oneself to the other (hy+) or instead b) to hide or to dissimulate

(hy-).

      The factors (e) and (hy) refer, on a purely essential basis, to “a human community which founds rules and laws and organizes thereby the social life of man.”  The paroxysmal drive mediates (intervenes in) the manner of the discharge of the drives.

       The particular energy source by which the paroxysmal drive works are the powers of affects.

       We must here again emphasize that affects never function as drives but that only their energies can be brought to the drive behaviors.

       Thus the surprise drive (P) can use the gross and fine affects, which are dammed up in itself, and the form of drive affect movements and behaviors are immediately discharged.

       The paroxysmal drive consists of:

       1. First, out of the epileptic factor (e), which on one side dams up the affects’ powers and discharges them in an attack manner.  This is the social-negative tendency: e-.

       2. Second, it consists of the hysteric form (hy), which dams up the fine affects.  This it does with the tendency hy-, which is the foundation for the moral shame shrinking.  On the other hand, it brings to exhibition at the same time these fine affects with the tendency hy+, which conditions the exhibition need.

       The common drive goal of both factors is that the person through surprise movements (playing dead, movement storm, color changes [blushing, paling] is to protect oneself from outer and inner dangers [for example, from killing the enemy].

 

Drive Factors

e

(Epilepsy)

Ethics, Cain and Abel trends

hy

(Hysteria)

Need for attention, exhibitionism

Drives Related to:

The relationship to the Law (Oedipal Period)

Law against killing the father                                                     Law against incest

Area of the Superego

      These factors express the position of the subject on the instinctual needs from the S vector and the C vector.  These e and hy factors work both against the external dangers and internal dangers.  Emotional control is the issue.

Other Descriptions

e-: tendency to evil, accumulation of rage, hatred, anger, vengeance, injustice, intolerance, “Cain”

e+: tendency to good, collective justice, tolerance, kindness, mercy, devotion, “Abel.”

Relationship to the law contributes to the constitution of effective subjectivity.  The father represents law and limitations and killing the father opens up limits and one’s subjectivity.  Killing the father is the utmost denial of the law.

hy+: tendency to shameless self-exhibition  hy-: tendency to collective shame-facedness.

 

Phylogenetic, animalistic

Playing dead

Protection need: to hide, to be still

Movement storm

Freudian: Early childhood-pregenital

Partial drives

Urethra Erotic (Bed-wetting)

Pleasure in drawing attention

Exhibitionist and Show Pleasure

[Scopophilia: to look at, to be curious.]

Psychic Characteristics

I. Paroxysmality.

II. Surprise and will-surprise kinds of attacks.

III. Rough or crude affects (hate, anger, rage), also change from the violent Cain needs and damming of them beyond consciousness.

Against this in the public or on-a-stage: the roles of the pious Abel (much simulation).

IV. Extreme breaks.

V. Immediate reversal into the opposite part:

Change from pious tenderness into uninhibited violence,

Immediate change from Abel to Cain.

Change out of:

sexual dullness into uninhibited sexuality,

repentant religiosity into sinful godliness,

anger and fright into wild boldness,

pious domesticity into goalless wandering, to go away from the home,

rest into unrest,

open self-revelation into abrupt closeness,

flexibility into rigid autism,

pedantry into superficiality,

altruism into egoism,

objectivity into subjective egocentricity,

openly being interested into apathy (stupor),

bashful modesty into unrestrained boasting,

optimism into pessimism,

moderate eating into excessive eating (polyphagia),

moderate drinking into excessive drinking (polydipsia),

denying alcohol into excessive alcohol enjoyment (dipsomania),

timid manner of speaking into a flood of words,

remaining faithful to the object into being untrue to the object,

stuttering into stammering,

being economical into frivolous squandering,

desire after sociability into friendless loneliness,

life affirming into longing for death.

I. Paroxysmality.

II. Will surprise attacks.

III. Repression of feminine tenderness, the love desires, the Abel demands: expression appearance of masculine powerfulness or violence

IV. Dissimulation –Spectacle simulation

V. Change from the simulated Cain into the repressed tender and pious Abel (crying fit), etc.

VI. The defense mechanisms have an animalistic character:

1. Movement storm (Kretschmer): producing apparent aimless movements in order to attain the need goal (being beloved, sexual satisfaction).  Forms: cramps, shivering movements, tic, grappling with, throwing about, running up and down, arranging scenes, smashing about, etc. (the typical hysteric scene)

2. Acting dead reflex (Kretschmer): self-mutilation, immobilization: inability to go (abasia), inability to speak (aphonia, aphasia), inability to think (stupor, being dammed up).

Loss of sense perceptions: hysterical blindness, deafness, insensitive to taste, pain, and sense of warmth, paling, blushing.

VII. Hypnosis talent.  Auto and other suggestibility.

VIII. Egocentricity: indulging in fantasies, lying (pseudologia fantastica).

IX. Unrestrained, uninhibited.

I. Pathologic, extreme, and negative manifestations:

(a) Drive disorders

1. Genuine epilepsy: (tonic-clonic conflict with loss of consciousness):

small attack (petit mal),

psychomotor attacks,

break in consciousness: absence,

conscious splitting, twilight condition, psychosis epileptica

Paroxysmal manias as psychic equivalents of epileptic attacks:

a. periodic wandering (poriomania)

b. periodic drinking (dipsomania),

c. periodic twilight conditions with stealing or larceny (kleptomania),

d. periodic incendiary ( pyromania),

e. deathlike sleep in twilight condition (for example, to run amuck) (thanatomania),

f. pyknolepsy

2. Equivalents of genuine epilepsy:

blood vessels neurotic migraine,

stuttering, stammering,

asthma, eczema,

enuresis (bed-wetting),

allergy illnesses,

rhinitis vasomotorica,

left-handedness,

glaucoma,

hay-fever, rheumatic disorders, neuralgias, colitis, shingles, slipped disk, gastric and duodenal ulcer, angina pectoris, cardiac infarct, high blood pressure, intestinal and bowel disorders

homicide following upon outbursts of rage

1. hysteria, anxiety-hysteria,

2. anxiety

3. tics

4. phobias

5. pavor nocturnus (nightmares)

6. pseudologia fantastica (lying)

7. conversions, hysterical (paralysis, blindness, etc.)

paroxysmal tachycardia, nervous colitis, uncontrolled fantasies, 

 (b) Delinquency

Kleptomania,

Swindling and confidence tricking

(c) Suicide

Death through fire, jumping off high places, death through dipsomania (drinking)

-

II. Physiologic, normal socialized manifestations:

(1) Drive symptoms

Accumulation of crude affect (rage, hatred, resentment, vindictiveness,) explosive discharge of emotions, intolerance

1. self-display: hy+

2. desire to make an impressions through ostentatious behavior: hy+

3. fantasy (hy-)

4. moralizing (hy-)

(2) Maturity, Adult

Startle drive (surprise) (Paroxysmal is patterned after having a fever: damming up, rising tension, and then the crisis and dropping of fever.)

(a) conscience censor “Abel”: e+

(b) damming up of gross affects (rage, hate, anger, envy, jealousy) “Cain” demand : e-

What is dammed up are the demands from the Sadism need.

Startle drive

(a) Exhibition drive (hy+)

(b) Moral censor (hy-)  The demands of the h drive (tender feelings) are what are censored.

(c ) Buildup of a fantasy world (hy-)

(3). (a) Socialization

(b) Character

(a) e+: merciful, charitable, good, mild, guilelessness, compassion, kind, benevolent, sympathetic, tolerant, conscientiousness, pity, true pathos, love, forgiveness, admiration, peace of mind, Abel characteristics in general.  Ethical impulse

(b) e-: malevolent, inclination to rage, hate, envy, jealousy, anger, revenge-seeking, malicious joy at another’s misfortune, compassionlessness, unfeelingness, untruthfulness, Cain characteristics in general.

Explosion impulse

 

(a) hy+: desire to show off, approval need, glory seeking, vanity, pleasure in drawing attention, desire to please, coquetry, will to be popular, playacting impulse,

(b) hy-: shamefulness, shyness, wish to hide oneself, wish for unreal fantasy world, living in fantasy world, whining and lamentation (hy +/-), deceitfulness, anxiousness

(4) Occupation, Professional field: Paroxysmal occupation field

e epileptiform (homo sacer) professions

hy hysteriform professions

(a)Chief Drive Need

Damming of rough affects and their discharge in unexpected or surprising moments (Cain and Abel)

Damming up of fine feelings and their discharge in unexpected moments

Spiritual exhibitionism

(b) Chief sense, reality perception

Sense of balance, smell

-

(c) Professional object

(a) original elements: fire, water, air, earth

(b) soul [depth of soul]

 

One’s own person

(d) (1) Professional means (2) professional activity

(1) transportation means: bicycle, streetcar, train, ship, auto, airplane

(2) changing places (constant movement occupations),  praying (church), devotion, serving, helping, doing good activities

Play with oneself: mimic, voice, movement activities

(e) Professional place or location

(a) height-depths

rising up-falling down

surge-swirl movement rotation (turning in a circle)

(b) church, stillness

 

Spectator, looker on, theater, assembly, meeting, multitude, street, etc.

(f) Occupation solutions: Occupation, Professional field Socialization in a profession, occupation

sales representative, health visitor

(a) transportation occupations: errand boy, seaman, chauffeur, flyer, railroad engineer, messenger, driver, sailor, aviator,

(b) jobs involving fire: miner, blacksmith, fireman, chimney sweep, baker, pyrotechnician, heating expert, steel worker,

(c) explosions occupations (fire and surprise): flame thrower, miner, gunpower maker, pyrotechnician, fireworks, explosives manufacture, bomb disposal operator, asphalt road worker

(d) soldier: in particular flame thrower, explosion expert, engineer, storm trooper.

Announcer, artist in general, actor, actress, orator, model, circus performers, street-crier, market vendor, popular speaker; TV, theatre, and film personalities,

Drama and acting art: with women: amazon roles, tragic heroines.

Motor conductor (women),

Animal trainer (men and women),

Calling out on the street, marketplace and entertainment places,

Sport and sport occupations: art of fencing, riding, hunting, wrestling, and mountain climbing.

III. Socially Positive manifestations:

Drive Symptoms

 

Sublimation

1. Collective justice, kindness, charity

2. devoutness

3. tolerance

Ethics, Religion, churchly, religious and ethical humanist

Acting and Art in general

Dramatic Art

Occupations

Holy (sacred) (helping, doing good) professions: nun, missionary sister, monk pastor, rabbi, health protection, physician in service of health protection, missionary, social worker (deal with the soul and evil)

Physician, therapeutic and help occupations in general

Politicians, actor,

Delegate, manager of bureau or factories

 

 

The Schizophrenic, or Ego, Drive

 

III.     The Schizophrenia (Sch) Vector, also called the Ego Vector because it indicates the structure and degree of rigidity or fluidity of the ego.

[See Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice for greater details.]

 

          k factor (pictures of catatonics) representing the need to keep up the ego’s narcissistic integrity and separateness from the environmental objects

 

          p factor (pictures of paranoid schizophrenics) representing the expansive needs of the ego, the tendency to fuse into the objects of the environment

 

The Four Functions of the Ego

 

As an introduction to the Ego Drive, following are extracts from L. Szondi’s Ich-Analyse [Ego Analysis], 1956 on the four functions of the ego.  Included are remarks on occupations and interests.   

 

The four elementary functions of the ego are projection, inflation, introjection, and negation.

1.     Projection (p-) is the original, primitive unconscious elementary striving of the ego which transfers the power and might of the unconscious of one’s self to an object in the outer world.  The unconscious end striving of this projection is being one and the same with the object, thus the participation drive.

2.     Inflation (p+) is the unconscious elementary striving to doubling, to be the original double-essence being, to be the “two sexual being” [hermaphrodite], to unify the man and woman in himself or herself.  The unconscious drive of each inflation is the striving for perfection [completeness, absoluteness] that is after being all.  The doubling and perfection arise in the soul through one’s making conscious the unconscious mental opposites. 

3.     Introjection (k+) is the unconscious original elementary striving of the ego after incorporation, after taking possession, after assimilation of all valuable objects and representations of the outer and inner world.   The unconscious end of each introjection is the striving after having all.

4.     Negation (k+) is the unconscious elementary striving of the ego after resignation, denial [saying no], and repression of definite demands, representations, and experiences.  The unconscious end goal of each negation is the disimagination of all ideals of Being (p +) and having (k+), ultimately destruction if pushed too far.

The unconscious tendencies after being one and same with the object, after being all, after having all, and after denying all and destroying all are the four unconscious elementary functions of the ego.

Thanks to these, on the one hand, man can be a social and human being, and, on the other hand, he may destroy himself and the objects of the world.

Therefore, the result of projection (p-) is the bodily and spiritual pairing and union of mankind, thus, the pair, the family, group, clan, people and social groups.

The result of inflation (p+) is the artistic drive after perfection [completeness, absoluteness] by the means of religion, art, poetry, and research.

As the social result of introjection (k+) we think of all the material and intellectual property and goods, all as “capital elements” in character, profession, and knowledge, and all the capital that figure as the material goods in the life of the individual and society.

The important social result of negation (k-) is of a double sense: at one time the social adaptation to reality and at another time destruction.  The quantity of negation determines if adaptation or destruction occurs.

In the beginning the function of the ego consists exclusively of the function of participation (p-).  And only when being one with the mother, the world, and the all continually becomes impossible is the ego compelled to live its power of being in another being form.  Thus appear the secondary projection [negative relationship with the object], inflation, introjection, and negation. 

 

Introjection

          Through introjection (k+) the ego can make so many danger-bringing strivings not dangerous, and indeed through the ego making out of being tendencies (p+) have interests (k+).  All that the diastolic [expanding] ego may be can by means of incorporation be reduced to interests of having.  Thus become the danger of expansion in being defended through the not-dangerous having-an-interest-in-something.  [Introjection is bringing an object into the sphere of the ego as an interest.]

          Will a man, for example, be all mighty as God?  Then he is mad.  However, if he introjects the being-God-demands into his ego and makes out of the inflative being-tendency scientific interests for mythology, religion, religious psychology, thus he has the making-mad danger through the k-ego defended himself through the incorporation of his being strivings.  Henceforth, he will no longer be God; he satisfies himself in that he has made the Gods a particular interest, and thus becomes a mythologer or religious researcher.  Many professions come—as we have shown—through introjection of threatening inflative or projective being strivings.  Instead of the demands that each to be (for example a woman to be a man, a man to be a woman, to be a murder or slayer as a Cain or a criminal in actuality appears through egosystole (k+) an adequate interest: gynecologist, judicial medicine, forensic psychiatry, prison work, etc.

          The egosystole (k+) may also through the introjection activity work as the way of limiting the being spheres through interests, professional choices, and character formations secure the oneness and health of the ego.

 

            As a further aid to understanding the k and p factors, following is the classic Szondi view of the circulation path of the Ego.  Pathoanalysis has another version of these movements of the ego.

 

Circulation Path of the Ego: Ego Development: Ego’s efforts to repair the broken dual union of the original participation (of the mother and child: the basic model of all participation) (stage Sch 0 -):

Stage III:  k+

Total Introjection

Total Incorporation

To have

 


                           A ego

          

              object   BB

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objects introjected become the images for the objects desired to be possessed by the subject.

Stage II:  p+

Inflation Phase (again after the breakup of the dual union, the ego increases strength and the object is impotent (partial incorporation): doubling of the ego: to be everything

 

    Object                  Ego

 


   A

    

 

 

                               Ego

 

Stage IV:  k-

Negation, respectively Destruction delusion

 

       Object                  Ego

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Stage 0:  p-

Original participation (of the mother and child as the basic model): Uroborus: Garden of Eden: Dual power: Sch: 0 -.

 

 


 Object                  Ego Object      Ego

 

 

         

 

                 Union: one and the same

 

Stage I: After separation from original dual union:

 

     Secondary Projection: Sch 0 – or 0 -!

              Total Projection: Ego is impotent: object is all-powerful.  But the Ego feels the strength of the Object as long as relations are good.

 

          Object              Ego

            

 

 

 

 

Stage V: Spiritual participation: Sch  +/-  +/-

 

 


     

 

   Object   Higher   Ego

                  Court

A higher court rules: art, religion, science, humanity

 

The k Factor

(k = Katatonia in German; Catatonia in English)

(Achtnich: Understanding, Reason, Logic, Need for intellectual clarity, Restriction, Limitation, Objectivity, Reality)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

The k+ Factor

(k = Catatonia)

           

          The k plus is the introjective function of the ego.  Szondi calls this the ego that has as its aim to have the valuable objects and knowledge of this world.  It is the material ego.  This is the part of the self that paradoxically wants to be emotionally detached from the objects of the world but at the same time it wants to focus on the real world of valuable objects in its concrete form.  The k plus ego has an ideal image of itself as Narcissus did of his mirror image in the pool.  This image he loves, not the objects in the world beyond the isolated glade.   This is the basis for one calling the k plus person egotistical, independent, and emotionally detached [objective, ruled by reason and the intellect].  As the diagram on the circulation path of the ego shows, the object of interest is included in the k plus ego.  Therefore, whatever is of value in the external material world—whether persons, possessions, or knowledge as perceived by the k plus person—becomes a focus of interest and must be had.   The k plus person has suffered the painful separation from the mother, and thus the environment, and now must maintain this separation in all relationships. 

          The artist in the stage of giving form to his ideas generated by the p function is ruled by the k plus factor.   The artist must be separated from the material form—whether music, a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a novel—in order to give it physical form.  Form implies order that is a primary concern to k plus.  Susan Deri states that the k plus person loves Mozart and Bach because this kind of music is highly structured.  Logic guides the underlying emotions in the music.

 

Occupations Satisfying the k Need

 

          In the following, Achtnich tends to give strong weight to the k minus in his list of functions, even though he presents this as a positive version of the k factor:

 

Functions of Factor V: Reason, Understanding, Thirst for Knowledge, and Sense of Reality

(k in pure Szondi):

[1]     to have exact perception and observation, to be attentive, to be concentrated (taken for granted to be in all occupations everywhere)

[2]     to learn, to acquire knowledge (learners in schools and places of instruction [This is mainly by introjection: k+.])

[3]     to name [to make up nomenclatures], to designate, to mark, to note down, to write (very many occupations everywhere, predominately in offices and workshops and in graphic trades)

[4]     to put in order, to divide, to register, to classify (store supervisor, government worker, archivist, librarian, office worker in offices, archives, government, record offices, stores, and libraries)

[5]     to count, to calculate, to compute (designer, bookkeeper, proofreader, auditor, cashier, salespersons and those in technical occupations of management and administration, computer work, and statistician)

[6]     to measure, to survey, to estimate (technical occupations and many handicraft occupations everywhere and in particular in factories, building sites, and laboratories)

[7]     to copy, to counterfeit, to translate (occupations in offices, technical draughtsman, blueprint men everywhere)

[8]     to follow instructions, to follow the letter of the law, to observe the regulations, to follow the instructions, to be reliable and trustworthy, to be accurate, to be diligent, to persevere, to have endurance, to have regular work habits (most occupations everywhere [Also see d-.]).

[9]     to adapt accurately, to regulate, to adjust, to make something fit in (precision technical occupations, for example, precision engineer, clock and watch industries, optical work in factories)

[10]   to put together, to erect (mechanic, engineer, fitter, technical occupations in industries, administrators working with apparatus and machines)

[11]   to test, to examine, to control, to secure, to compare (examiner, inspector, diagnostician, book expert, data-processing expert, computer expert in places where inspections are carried out)

[12]   to correct, to improve (proofreader, teacher)

[13]   to automate, to mechanize (technical professions in industries, management working wit apparatus, machinery, and robotic machines)

[14]   to construct (technical design occupations, designer, blueprint person, drawing person in design places working with technical materials)

[15]   to organize, to plan, to arrange, to manage, to administer, to systemize (planer, dispatcher, manager, organizer, program planner, government and civil service administrator or manager, religion institution manager, leader in industry, government, and trade)

[16]   to understand logical connections, to prove, to abstract (theoretical, logical occupation activity, computer and data processing work everywhere, using logic, theories, principles, systems, evidence, and proof)

[17]   to criticize, to judge, to examine critically (critical observer, assessor, examiner, advisor, expert, diagnostician everywhere)

[18]   to explain, to inform, to instruct, to teach, to bring always something forward to others (teacher, instructor everywhere and in school with people and learners)

[19]   to decide, to set oneself a goal (very many occupations everywhere, using decision-making capability)

[20]   to require order, to discipline, to give orders, to give directions, to give assignments, to order based on facts, to exercise competence, to exercise authority (occupation positions in which instructions will be given and in which they will be followed as in countries, industries, government, military, and trade for people, order, rules, laws for countries to establish authority, compliance, and discipline)

 

The k- Factor

(k = Catatonia)

 

Whereas the k plus person is independent emotionally of the objects, persons, and interests in his or her environment, the k minus person is ruled by the environment and its representatives.  The model is the student who first enters school for the first time.  Before his wishes were dominant for him.  Now, he must conform to the wishes of society as represented by the school authorities, the rules, and the knowledge approved by his particular society.  Now, the person must repress his own desires—some not approved by his or her own internal censor—and not approved by the environment.  The k minus person takes on the approved values and postures of his environment.  Laws, rules, conventional roles—all these become his guides.  Repression, denial, and opposition to his or her own imagination rule.  Adapting to the environment rules.  As with the k plus, separation still prevails as the k minus person keeps emotional distance from his or her own inner feelings and the environment.  Whatever prevails in the popular culture rules.  The k plus person follows his or her own desires that easily conflict with the popular culture.  The k plus person can be the artist, whereas the k minus person could only follow a fixed formula for a work of any kind.  The k minus person and creativity are not very compatible.  Ultimately, Szondi has k minus as one of the basic component of the common man who steps mechanically through life, following the march music prescribed by society.

 

Achtnich: Interpretations for Negative k

 

Note: Although Achtnich is giving the negative of k in general, in reality, most of the list of activities, or functions, are k minus.  Therefore, the negative of k given here is a negative of k minus, which is the factor for adaptation and repressing one’s own desires for the good of the society.

 

The denied factor

the native, original

factor need

the defense directed

against

the working out of

the defense is

a reaction formation

(doing the reverse of

the original need)

-V [k-]

Reason,

Common Sense

be rational

Adaptation,

limitation,

Compulsion 

not adaptable behavior,

learning disturbances

 

            In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for the V [k] need opposite one another:

 

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-V [k-]

There can be a turning away from all technical and economics matters, all accurate-pedantic, and similar forms of uniform rules.  That indicates a certain “compulsiveness” that is attached to each vocational activity that is declined.  Thus viewed, the denial of V [reason, common sense] cause an inhibition concerning achievement, work disturbances, and learning disturbances.  Also the denial of authority can show itself, for example, as opposition or disorders by adolescents.

Between masculine and feminine V testees there is an essential difference: for feminine V testees the denial of V is so to speak somewhat “normal” and belongs at the same time to their “femininity.”  These, still so much for the better, feel also widely today to belong to a whole succession of very typical and masculine “V-occupations.”

One supports control functions and regulating.  One is therefore ready to work accurately and exactly when this must be the case. 

Opposition is not too pronounced and is somewhat held back.  Anyway there is still a readiness to adapt and to be incorporated into the general system.  

 

The k0 Factor

(k = Catatonia)

 

In many ways, the k factor is what is normally considered the ego.  Szondi uses the name ego for all the functions of the ego, but, in reality, the k factors and p factors comprise the self since the ego is called the bridge of opposites.  The p factors are closely allied to the Id and emotions; the k factors are representatives of controls over the outward expression of the Id’s desires and emotions.  Szondi calls the k factors systole, or constrictive, and the p factors diastole, or expansive. 

In this context, the open, or zero, k signifies as one of its meanings: the absence of the controlling factors of k.  The controls of the ego are absent.  Susan Deri, as usual, has explained the full meaning of the open k.  She states that the zero k signifies primary narcissism: a state that harkens back to the state where the baby has no frustrations and thus immediate satisfaction of all its desires.  This is the Garden of Eden state before the fall.  In this condition, there is no object such as the mother since the presence of the mother only becomes apparent when there is some frustration of the baby’s desires.  The k factors only come into being when there are frustration of desires and an object; in this case the mother is recognized.  The k plus functions by introjecting the image of the object in order to have the object always available, even when the object is absent or is frustrating the baby.  The k minus works by repression to overcome frustrations. 

Primary narcissism is self-love and concern only for himself or herself and occurs when there is no awareness or recognition of an external object.   Once an object has been recognized because of frustration and introjected [k plus] as an object to be loved, then secondary narcissism arises.  This new object is a substitute for the original object.  Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalyst, calls this stage the mirror stage of development.  This is the situation where Narcissus is in love with the mirror image of himself in the pool. 

Susan Deri then points out that subjects beyond the baby stage who give the open k are infantile in character.  Particularly when open k is with p minus, these individuals give full reign to their needs and express them in their environment and toward their objects.  They do not expect to encounter frustrations in their self-expression.  When they do meet opposition, they react violently like a baby in rage.  They are not to be reasoned with, Susan Deri states, because they are not receptive rationally [no k plus] to any arguments that oppose their wishes; rather they just want to express what is in them and not take anything from the outside.

These are difficult people to deal with.

After the k factor appears as loaded, the open k also signifies that the functions of the k factor are being lived out or satisfied in some positive or negative way. 

 

The p Factor

(p = paranoia)

(Achtnich: Spirit, Intuition, Creative)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

The p+ Factor

(p = paranoia)

 

Susan Deri places the p factor on the side of passion and the Id.  The p plus person lives out his or her needs in the environment and people.  She envisions the p factor as the gateway to self-expression in the outside world.   Whereas the k factor wants to be separate from the outside world emotionally, even while wishing to have materially this outside world, the p factor person wishes to fuse with the outside world and its objects and to be emotionally involved.  The p factor wants to be and, thus, to live out its needs with others. 

As Szondi has stated, the p person wants to be everything and to be complete.  In fact, the p plus person strives for completeness and perfection.  Susan Deri points out that the p plus person is idealistic.  The p plus person is strong on words.  The pathoanalysis view as ably expressed by Jean Mélon in his book on Szondi puts the p plus factor at the highest stage of development, for p plus is related to language itself and comes late in one’s development. Mélon calls the p plus person “The Thinker.”  He likewise calls the k plus person “The Maker.”  Creativity comes from the p plus and p minus side and is brought into reality by the k plus factor and submitted to criticism by the k minus factor. 

There can be a grandiose side to the p plus person because when separating from the mother, this person extracted power from the mother and became at once both: the self and the mother as one.  Ultimately, the p plus person can fuse with all of humanity and God.  The boundaries between opposites are overcome and all becomes one.

 

Occupations Satisfying the p Need

 

Achtnich in his listing of functions is drawing from what are classically both the p+ and the p- factors. 

 

Functions of Factor G: Spirit, Intuition, Idea, Imagination (p in pure Szondi):

 

[1]     to meditate, to philosophize, to imagine, to muse (philosopher, humanities or arts scholar, mystic, founder of religion in college or school, using intelligence, insight, ideas, intuition, meditation, illumination about the unknown, the unresearched, and the unconscious, the world of religion, philosophy, metaphysics, mysticism, and the occult [p minus is here too.])

[2]     to see and to grasp intuitively connections and relationships, to combine, to solve problems, to unriddle, to have psychological understanding (psychologist, psychiatrist, careers’ advisor, history researcher, archeologist, who works independent of place)

[3]     to investigate, to interrogate, to spy out, to be a detective, to sound out, to ferret out, to track down, to sniff out (jurist, criminologist, prosecuting attorney, judge, detective, spy, auditor [These are mainly p minus: to spy out things])

[4]     to inquire, to explore, to find out, to discover, to test, to detect and to seek the new and the unknown (researcher, inventor, chemist, physicist, astronomer, research physician, pharmacist, futurologist, inventor of machines, discoverer in a research lab, expedition, and research areas in natural science and technical research, using the independence and freedom of the intellect and spirit as requirement for improvement, finding completeness and even genius)

[5]     to design, to be creative, to write poetry, to write music, to compose (artist, painter, sculpturer, composer, writer, film director, fashion designer, couturière, creative architect in art studio, using creative fantasy, imagination, images, representations, and symbols)

[6]     to immerse oneself into something, to empathize (conductor, musician, psychiatrist, criminologist, simultaneous translator; psychiatrists and psychologists use intuition and readiness for passive identification [Intuition is also p minus.])

[7]     to spread ideas, to win influence, to act as a missionary, to convince, to successfully launch new products (manager of salespersons, product manager, politician, journalist, professor, missioner in commerce, trade, and university, using power of persuasion and inflative thinking)

[8]     to persuade, to talk a person into something, to convert, to suggest, to hypnotize, to make promises, to awaken hopes (politician, advertising expert, genius about selling things, and religious and social renovator in mass meetings and in bargaining and negotiation, using power of persuasion, suggestion, fascination, emotion, and magic [Magic is the k plus factor.])

[9]     to believe, to have a presentment, to foresee, to anticipate (priest, theologian, preacher, sectarian, but also a business expert in the church and revival places, using belief, premonition, and expectation [This is really p minus as well.  Also see the e factor for the religious connection.])

 

The p- Factor

(p = paranoia)

 

The p minus factor appears first in the ego’s development and the p plus last.  The model for p minus is the baby’s being one and the same with the mother.  Szondi calls this participation as well as projection.  All this union is on an unconscious level.  Later, after the baby has realized that there is a separation from the mother and the environment, he or she longs for this state of being one with the other.  Unlike the p plus person who has become aware consciously—particularly through words—of some unconscious needs, the p minus person always is unconscious of how he or she is living out his or her needs in the outer world of the environment and people.  Whereas the p plus person has a grandiose view of self, the p minus person feels inferior to the other and the environment unless there is a positive fusion with another person, idea, or situation.  Then the p minus feels the power of the other person or idea.  The p minus is constantly acting out his or her needs in the surrounding world.  The p minus person has great intuition since the insights and ideas are coming from the outside or inside without any logical and conscious processing by this person’s intellect.  Szondi puts participation [the p minus function] at the heart of his views of the ego, really the self.  Ultimately, the p minus can fuse, that is participate, with a higher power.  The negative side of the p minus and also of the p plus is the idea of persecution by the other.  This is a negative participation, for the p minus person is still in a union with the other, only in a negative one.

          Susan Deri points out at that painters and sculptors function with p minus since they do not verbally give expression to their emotions as do writers [p plus people] who are more conscious of what they are expressing.

          Szondi indicates that the p minus is the most common of all the ego factors and is, along with k minus, a chief component of the average man.  Both p minus and k minus are tuned to the culture and follow its lead. 

 

Achtnich: Interpretations for Negative p

 

The denied factor

the native, original

factor need

the defense directed

against

the working out of

the defense is a

reaction formation

 

-G [p-] Spirit,

Intuition

fantasy, the spirit    

given free reign       

Intellectuality

Inferiority feelings,

envy, blasé attitude

                                                                                                                                   

                In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for the G [p] need opposite one another:

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-G [p-]

Denial of intellect [spirit]—perhaps because one dashes along and therefore no talent is present. One will strive for no higher occupations and positions, perhaps out of resignation because of frequent failures.  One has no creative fantasies and no intellectual [spiritual] or scientific research interests.  One strives more after objective-practical occupations in which all is prescribed.

 

 

 

 

                                        

A problematic situation: inferiority feelings—yet one will however nevertheless aspire to higher positions…The impulse to gather with “famous people” in order to grab something for oneself from this celebrity.

 

The p0 Factor

(p = paranoia)

 

The p factors are allied with the Id in that the drives wish to be lived out in the external world.  However, this cannot freely occur unless the k is a zero too.  In this case the self-expression and fusing with the persons, ideas, and things of the external world can occur.

Susan Deri points out that, in all other cases, the k factors can cause the p factor to be zero.  For example, if k minus is functioning, then the desires to fuse with external objects and express the self’s innermost desires will be repressed.  Then, the values and wishes of society will be the master.  If the k plus is active, then the objects, knowledge, and valuable things of the external world will be internalized or become a focus of interest and of having.  In Freudian terms, the libido that was directed toward objects in the external world—that which is involved with the p factors—becomes directed internally and becomes ego libido, or narcissistic libido as indicated by the k plus factor. 

Although we are not generally discussing the pathological aspects of the different factors, one must observe with Susan Deri that a k plus and a k minus ego with an open p signify compulsive phenomena.  Therefore, the energy and desires normally directed toward the external world are absorbed by internal thought, rituals, and compulsions.  An intellectualization of the p factors’ emotions takes place.

 

Sixteen Combinations for the Schizophrenic [Ego] Vector

[See Szondi, Moser, and Webb book for detailed analyses.]

[Extract from L. Szondi, Experimental Diagnostics of Drives, English translation by Gertrude Aull]

 

Sch1  =       - 0               The mythical mystical contemplative ego

Sch 2  =      + -               The autistic ego, the recalcitrant ego

Sch 3  =      - 0               The compulsive ego

Sch 4  =      - +               The anti-inflative ego fighting obsessiveness

Sch 5  =      - -                The drill ego

Sch 6  =      + +             The flooded ego, endangered ego

Sch 7  =      + 0              The professional ego

Sch 8  =      +/- 0          The unfaithful masculine ego

Sch 9  =      +/- +          The talented anxious ego

Sch 10 =     +/- -           The ego in fight for freedom, escapist’s ego

Sch 11 =     0 +              The obsessive prophetic ego

Sch 12 =     0 +/-          The deserted, passive, feminine ego

Sch 13 =     + +/-          The deserted ego introjecting the deserting object

Sch 14 =     -  +/-          The jealous self-aggressive ego

Sch 15 =     +/- +/-      The integrative ego, anticipating catastrophe

Sch 16 =     0 0              The disintegrating ego, ego-transformation

 

Szondi: Transformation of the Apparent Forms of Drive Factors:

Personality Vicissitudes Related to the Eight Drive Needs

 

Drive Vectors

 

Sch

Schizophrenia/Ego Drive

Drive Factors

k

(Catatonia)

(German spells this word with  “k”)

Ego constriction, ego systole, adjustive (k-), materialistic ego (k+)

The function (k) refers to the auxiliary “to have,” tends to delimit the Ego, and aims at separating itself.  It is the tendency to create norms, to capitalize, to transform.  The (k) moves in the direction of a contraction in order to make the Ego free of any dependence.

p

(Paranoia)

 

Ego expansion, ego diastole, spiritual ego

 

 

The function (p) refers to the auxiliary “being,” with the register of the representations, the setting in scene of its relations to the others. The (p) has the need that works in the direction of the unbounded expanding of the Ego.

Drives Related to:

[Some of these ideas come from pathoanalysis.]

The Relationship to the “Self”

(which implies a certain relationship to totality)

 

      For Szondi, the construction, not of the whole ego, but of its essential core, depends on the whole of possible relationships between the self on the one hand and the different modalities of being (p) and having (k) on the other hand.  Schizophrenia is in a way a model for psychosis.  Only schizophrenia attacks the basis of the ego, or the self; the other psychoses reach that ego or that self only by repercussion.  They do not have a place in the self if we express it this way.

     The Ego vector (Sch) is the central authority; its theoretical elaboration is the keystone of the Szondi architecture.  It structures the other vectors: it has as a function to elaborate the other impulses, to subject them to its own processes and to transform them.  It is the place of the defense mechanisms in regard to the instinctual dangers represented by the other vectors but also in regard to those that are its own.

     The reactions of the subject in this vector testify to a tendency to “self-realization” (implement one’s self, express one’s self).  But this the Ego takes position in relation to itself, in such way that it constitutes, develops, and cultivates itself by the interaction with the outside.

     It is about the dimension of the subject.  It is the relation with oneself which is posed; the style of the person in her/his “being in the world,” and even her/his essential expression.

     The Sch vector is the dialectical one between the extension of the conscience of the desires (p) and the restrictive function of the (k) tendency; between the need for increasing the Ego (p) and that of its contracting (k).

Other Descriptions

k+: tendency to autism, egotism, egocentricity, narcissism, and introjection.

k-:  tendency to adjustment to the collective, repression

p+: tendency to ego-expansion, to seize power, blame others (projection [p-])

tendency to spread humanitarian ideals, spiritual values

Phylogenetic, animalistic

none

none

Freudian: Early childhood-pregenital

Partial drives

Original narcissism

First phase of introjection

Buildup of the perceptive world

Original projection

Dual union with the mother

Psychic Characteristics

aristocratic exclusivity

eclectic [choose the best] choice of friends

system-making, scheme-making,

     rigid formalism

hard-headedness, sobriety, rationalism

scrupulous pedantry, exactness, exemplary

without humor, taciturn, abruptness,

phlegmatic, feelings cold, calm;

supersensitive, mimosa-like sensitivity, obstinacy; inflexible, uncompromising

incapable of debating both sides

inhibited

narrow-mindedness, bigoted, compulsive, automaton, affected manner

omnipotence feeling, autism, incapable of going into another (auto-psychic resonance): reserved

immovable

To have all

a. p+:

striving after greatness, boaster, swagger, braggart

creative, a doer, a maker, constructor, designer

ability to go into another

   (allo-psychic resonance)

to know all

psychic inflation [to be two opposites at once: male and female, for example],  obsessive

irrationalism

fanaticism, enthusiasm

feelings of exultation

ambitendency

religious fanaticism

To be all

 

b. p-:

prophetic-like behavior

magic thinking

occultism, spiritualism,

sectarian

I. Pathologic, extreme, and negative manifestations:

(a) Drive disorders

1. Catatonia (katatonia in German)

2. Schizoid neurosis

3. Compulsion neurosis

4. Conversion hysteria

5. Apathetic asthenic neurasthenia

1. Paranoia

2. Paranoid schizophrenia

3. Demential senilis paranoides

4. Querulousness (paranoid lawsuits)

5. Irritative neurasthenia

6. Paranoid megalomania

7.  Paranoid homosexuality

8. Narcomania: morpheme, opium, cocaine

p-: Hebephrenia

 (b) Delinquency

Vagrancy, being a hobo, burglary, work shy, globe trotters, wanderers

Political crimes expressive of grandiose ideas

p-: card player, defrauder, swindler, social subversion, revolutionary in society

(c) Suicide

Self-starvation, being run over by a train

Poison, gun

II. Physiologic, normal socialized manifestations:

(1) Drive symptoms

1. Ego-constriction, self-sufficiency, ego systole

2. Adjustive ego (k-)

3. Introjection, materialistic ego (k+)

4. Object-ideal formation: “I want to have this.”

5. The rational censor

Ego expansion, Ego diastole

1. Ego promotion

2. Need to bring unconscious impulses to awareness

3. Expansion of the personality (power), spiritual self

4. Projection

5. Ego-ideal formation: “I want to be this.”

(2) Maturity, Adult

Ego Systole

Autism

(a) Buildup of Possessed, object-ideal

Yes of will (k+)

(b) Negation, renunciation, denial, repression, No of will (k-)

Ego diastole

(a) Buildup of ego-ideal, spiritual tendencies (p+)

(b) Projection (p-)

(3). (a) Socialization

(b) Character

(a) k+: Introversion

egoism, egocentrism, narcissism, autism, power-seeking, sobriety, temperance, dryness, dullness, rule of understanding, love of form, love for logic, realism, rationalism, monotony, order compulsion, pedantry, stubbornness, detachment, seclusion, ritualism, compulsive, knowledge seeking, rationalism, pedantry

(b) k-: denial impulse, separation (or isolation) impulse, inclination to inhibition and repression; destruction impulse, negativism

(a) p+: Extroversion

passion, ardor, vehemence, worship impulse, adoration impulse, enthusiasm, reveling, obsession, partiality, pathos feelings, rank feelings, position and status feelings, greed for power, self-overestimation, greatness delusion, pride, conceit, arrogance, rivalry impulse, superiority complex, arrogance, bigheadness, bumptiousness, bossiness

(b) p-: self under evaluation, delusions of inferiority, self-tormenting, foresight, mistrust, scape goat seeking, unforgetful, quarrel seeking, oversensitive, resentment, accusation impulse, quarrelling impulse

 

(4) Occupation, Professional field: Paroxysmal occupation field

 

Sch professions Schizoform professional circle: k professions: catatonoid

Sch professions Schizoform professions circle: p profession: paranoid

(a)Chief Drive Need

Shut up oneself, ego contraction, narcissism, egocentrism, autism, Have power

Ego expansion, boasting, psychic Inflation, creative, Being power

(b) Chief sense, reality perception

Closing off of the sense organs

Smell, hearing

(c) Professional object

Reproductive and abstract knowledges: logic, mathematics, physics, aesthetics, geography, grammar, etc.

 

(a) pragmatic, analytic knowledge: psychology, psychiatry, medicine, chemistry

(b) music

(c) mystism, mythology, occultism

(d) (1) Professional means (2) professional activity

(a) book

(b) writing, reading

Invasion of ideas, creative, inspiration

(e) Professional place or location

Enclosed spaces, classroom, lecture hall, library, “ivory” tower, cloister, nature

 

Research institute, laboratory, chemical factory, exotic regions or places.

The depth of the soul and the earth, insane asylums, jails

(f) occupation solutions: Occupation, Professional field Socialization in a profession, occupation

Soldier, bookkeeper, telegrapher, surveyor, cartographer, watchman, accountant, post office clerk, farmer, night watchman, light house watchman, book seller, printer,  security guard, administrator, writer, designer, pattern-drawer, machine draftsman, printer, forester,

Builder, organizer, druggist, pharmacist, chemist, detective, lawyer, counterspy, constructor

 

III. Socially Positive manifestations:

Drive Symptoms

 

Sublimation

1. Adaptation to the collective

2. Repression of autism, egotism, egocentricity, narcissism

 

Thinking skill, philosophy metaphysics, aesthetics, logic, mathematics, socialized humanist, reasoning processes in general, social humanist, philosophy based on intellectual analysis

1. Need to engender humanitarian trends, as collective kindness, generosity, justice, restraint, self-denial

2. To create and promote humanitarian ideas

3. Collective spiritualistic preoccupations

Sublimation: poetry, fiction, research, creative and spiritual humanist

Occupations

Teacher, professor for mathematics, philosophy, national economics

Art critic

Engineer

Professor, chiefly linguist, or professor of logic, mathematics, physics, philosophy, social sciences

Aesthetics, art historian

(a.) inventor

(b) poet, writer, author

(c) psychologist, psychiatrist:

      depth psychology, psychoanalysis

(d) mythologist, mystic, geology, paleontology

(e) expeditions-leader, missionary

(f) musician,

(g) druggist, chemist [k o p -:

    paranoid belief that one is being

    poisoned]

Hebephrenia: graphologer, astrologer, chirologer. (hebephrenia involves repression of exhibition (hy-), projection (p-) in the form of hypochondria [exhibiting symptoms of the body], strong aggression (s+) among other symptoms)

p-:

(h) judge, examining judge, public prosecutor, lawyer

(i) detective, spy, counterspy

(j) nature-cure physician

     [follower of homeopathy]

(k) specialist in metaphysics, theosophy, Hinduism

 

 

The Contact Drive

 

IV.     The Circular Vector, or Contact Vector that is more useful.  This indicates the general area of the subject’s object relationships or, in other words, his or her contact with reality.

          (Circular comes from the Circular name for Depressives and Maniacs)

[See Susan Deri’s book Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice for greater details.]

 

          d factor (pictures of depressed patients) reflecting the possessive “anal” type of object relationship

 

          m factor (pictures of manic patients) indicating the clinging “oral” type of object relationship

 

The d Factor

(d = depression)

(Achtnich: Matter, Materiality)

(Achtnich: Factor d comprises the “matter,” the substance, the concrete, the comprehensible, the practical, the earth and the ground, the natural, the relationship to animals, but also the relationship to all having value, to possessions, gold, and property)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

                                                     The d+ Factor

(d = depression)

 

Although the d in d+ or d- factor stands for depression, the d factor concerns anality as described by Sigmund Freud and his followers.  The child considers faces as an object that is possessed and controlled.  From a psychological viewpoint, therefore, materiality is related to anality: the retention and disposal of faces, a material substance.  Persons as objects are also viewed psychologically as mental and material things.  With objects of any kind, the issue of getting and retaining of them comes into question.  Does one possess an object—whether material or living being—or not?  What happens if one loses a valued object?  Then, psychologically, one can become depressed, for depression is intimately involved with the loss of the treasured object.  Susan Deri and Sigmund Freud have covered the details of anality and its connection to depression, or melancholia.

The pictures of depressives are shown in the Szondi test.  Those who react positively and identify with these depressives are d plus.  Jean Mélon in his Course on Szondi (1998) [an English translation by Arthur C. Johnston] clearly distinguishes the differences between the reactions to a loss and depression over it for the d plus and d minus person.  The d plus person fully identifies with the pictures of depressives in the Szondi test and fully feels the distress of grief much more than the d minus person.  But d plus says to his or herself: O.K., I’ve lost my beloved.  This is terrible.  But one cannot just do nothing.  One must try to overcome one’s grief.  How to do that?  Get a substitute for the lost person.  Typical of this is the man who loses his wife and within months or a year has remarried.   The d plus person wants a concrete substitute for his loss.  He or she faces reality.  The motto is “Do something.”   

Susan Deri gives three attributes of the d plus’ reaction to objects.  One is that there is a strong need for concrete objects and that they are highly valued.  Two is that the d plus person’s focus is on external reality as the source for all material things. And three is that the d plus person wishes actively to manipulate and to pursue objects.  This last aspect, Deri points out shows the link between s plus and d plus. 

Sculpturers and painters typically give the d plus reaction since they deal with physical materials.  An interest in money, the classic symbol for faces, is of great interest to the d plus person.

Like the epileptics, the d plus persons have an “adhesive” quality in their attachments to objects and persons.  Susan Deri states that this leads to “a general possessiveness, tendency for rivalry, and a persistence in reaching a goal that might even lead to obstinacy.”  Overall, d plus and open d are the most frequent reactions of the general population.

With a constant desire for the new and for change, the d plus person does not have much loyalty to a material object or person.  Jean Mélon sees as a result of these desires that the d plus person has difficulty in attaching oneself really or for a long time.  This also applies to a task or a job.  Jean Mélon sums up the d plus character: “The subject has no real attachment to the old object.  He is always in the search for new objects, new feelings, open for random encounters.  The contact is infantile, inconsistent and incontinent.” [This quotation is an English translation by Leo Berlips of Jean Mélon’s work available on the Szondi Forum web site under “Contact Profiles.”]

The d plus person is strongly influenced in his or her character by the expulsion stage of anality as described by Sigmund Freud and his followers.  This d plus person enjoys anality, loves some disorder, irregularity, and differences.

 

Occupations Satisfying the d Need

 

Following are the functions, or activities, given by Achtnich:

 

Functions of Factor M: Material, Substance, Possessions, the Concrete

(d in pure Szondi):

 

[1]     to hold fast, to hold back, to seize, to grip, to lay hold, to take into possession, to collect, to hoard, to preserve, to save, to acquire, to want to have and to possess, to act as an archivist, to distribute and to receive, to have to do with money (archivist, librarian, employee in a museum, numismatist [coin expert], stamp dealer, specialties salesperson occupations, bank specialist in mortgages, cashier, teller in bank, collector, card dealer, manages savings accounts in a bank, collection agency, museum, archive, library, a second-hand bookshop [antiquarian], a remainder department for books, lost-and-found department [d minus is here too.])

[2]     to mine, to dig, to do any activity involving dirty or filthy things (farmer, gardener, earthworks maker, miner, road and construction workers, geologist, civil engineer, construction-of-building engineer, using hands [If something does involve using one’s hands, it does not make sense.])

[3]     to clean, to polish, to wash off, to wash up, to rinse, to clean up dirt, to weed (sewage worker, one cleaning up chemical spills and pollutions, sanitation facilities installer, worker in removal of natural wastes, snow plow person, worker in cleaning institutions and manufacturing of cleaning materials, remover of dirt, excrement, filth, manure, rubbish, garbage)

[4]     to smear, to oil, to grease, to put salve on something (garage-helper worker, physical therapist, beautician, cosmetician in fabrication of oil and fats that are used in machines, massage parlors, mud bath spas [See h plus also.])

[5]     to mix, to stir up, to mix up (sausage, soap, starch, and paper makers, workers in dairy, beer brewing, workers in canning food, chocolate, and pastry factories, work involving thick, slow-moving material, mush, semi-solid material, and dough)

[6]     to pave streets, to asphalt streets (plasterer, bricklayer, asphalt-layer, and worker on concrete machines at construction sites, particularly civil engineering and road construction sites)

[7]     to print, to press, to form, to knead (sculpturer of stone, wood, and plastic, printer, worker with print presses and pressure presses, pottery worker, pottery factories)

[8]     to paste, to glue, to use as an enema, to size, to fuse, to melt, to dissolve, to break up (different industry and commerce workers, bookbinding and cardboard box makers  in workshops and factories and in fabrication of glue)

[9]     to house paint, to paint over, to plaster (plasterer, painter, auto-lacquerer at building sites and  workshops, using plaster, colors, lacquer, salt solution, and acid)

[10]   to smell, to occupy oneself with disgusting or nauseous generating things (tanner, dissection helper, skinner, animal lab technician, chemist in chemical factory, perfume makers, working with decaying materials: It does not disturb when it stinks.)

[11]   to occupy oneself with animals (farmer, animal preserver, animal guardian, zoo employee, pet shop owner, veterinarian, animal researcher, pig breeder, chicken breeder, dog breeder)

[12]   to tan skins, to work with leather (tanner, leatherware worker, and shoe maker)

[13]   to milk, to curdle milk (dairy person, cheese maker, and milker)

[14]   to fertilize, to use dung or manure (farmer, agriculture technologist)

[15]   to ferment, to press grapes, to press out as with a wine press (maker of unfermented fruit juice, wine producer, wine grower, employee in wine shop)

[16]   to plant, to stick in the ground (gardener, farmer, and tree- nursery employee)

[17]   to harvest, to gather, to collect (farmer)

[18]   to accumulate, to store up, to pile up, to stack up (store worker, waste materials dealer)

[19]   to conserve, to restore (restorer of old artworks, preserving-food factory worker)

[20]   to repair, to patch, to mend, to fix (people who have to do with restoring a condition or an object)

[21]   to search out, to seek, to hunt out, to ferret, to desire to avoid losses (the searching man, recycling occupations, “treasure hunter”)

[22]   to retain one’s thoughts and ideas, to remember things, to hang on to the same ideas, to ponder, to muse (psychotherapist in quiet places, focused on mental conflict and depression, using remembrance [This is mostly d-.])

[23]   to not separate oneself from the past, the situation, the work place; to seek the origin or source of things, to want to return, to preserve tradition, to occupy oneself with the past, history, the old, the valuable or precious things (classical philogist [linguist], genealogist, ancestor research, archeology, earth research, geology, history research, paleontologist [This is all d minus: looking to the past.])

[24]   to concern oneself with the dead, the past, decay, decomposition, putrefaction, to bury (undertaker, mortician, employee in funeral parlor, anatomy, medical examiner medicine, employee in life insurance agency)

[25]   to do monotonous, uniform, patience demanding unspiritual activities (worker in an assembly plant that uses a conveyor belt and automation that produces lots of similar products and other monotonous kind of work)

 

The d- Factor

(d = depression)

 

With the Szondi test, one can reject the pictures of those severely depressed, and they are the d minus persons.  Jean Mélon has equally described the reaction of the d minus person to a loss that results in depression.  When this person loses a loved one or object, the immediate reaction is to hold on to the memory of the person and to ruminate on this beloved person or object.  One constantly looks to the past.  The model for the loss is that of losing one’s mother.  The d minus person never forgets the paradise of childhood.  The d minus person does not look for new objects. Jean Mélon states that the efforts of another person to get close to the d minus person causes the d minus person to perceive this new person as an intruder or even an enemy [“Contact Profiles”].  As a result of a loss, the d minus person creeps into bed—a symbol of the womb—and, metaphorically, stays there is his or her sorrow.  He or she feels the grief, but at the same time denies the loss to avoid the pain of loss.  The d minus person cannot bear the loss of his or beloved and remains loyal to the memory of this person and cannot bear to make a change to something new.  In summary, the d minus person sticks to the old, whereas the d plus person looks for the new.

Susan Deri points out that a chief characteristic of the d minus person is that he or she has strong attachment to one particular person or one particular idea, whereas the d plus person wishes to possess many objects. 

Retention is the key word to describe the d minus person.  These persons wish to retain the old; thus, they are conservative.  Unlike the d plus person who can easily replace a valuable old object or person with something new, the d minus person has such strong attachment to an object or person that has come into his or her circle that this loss is experienced as extremely depressing.   When this reaction is applied to a broader area, the d minus persons become the guardians of the traditions and conventions of the established order.  Although the d minus person likes to retain money once it is in his or her possession, this person does not aggressively pursue money as does the d plus person.  When in love with a person, an idea, or a project, the d minus person does not take into account reality: they may love the person when there is no chance of this love being returned or continue with a project even when it is impractical to pursue it.   Retaining the love and feelings in a passive way without aggressive pursuit of the person in a real way is sufficient for the d minus person.  This is the very opposite of the d plus person who aggressively pursues his or her objects and goals only when there is a promise of concrete results in a material world.  Another area where retention applies is the d minus person’s desire to remain in the same place and to stay in the same job if at all possible.  The d plus loves to change places, to be on the go, and to change jobs.  The d minus person likes to retain energy in a state of rest, whereas the d plus person likes movement.

The d minus person is the one that ordinary people think about when they say “anal.”  Sigmund Freud’s description of the anal character is that of the retention stage of anality.

 

Achtnich: Interpretations for Negative d

 

The denied factor

the native, original

factor need

the defense directed

against

the working out of

the defense is

a reaction formation

-M [d-] Material,

Substance,    

Possessions, 

the Concrete

need for the  

primitive material

Anality

orderliness,

willful, obstinate,

perfectionism

 

            In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for the p need opposite one another:

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-M [d-]

One turns away from all dirty or stinking work.

Without relationship to origin, ground, possessions, etc.

Problematic in capability for bonding relationships. 

One seeks work (so long as coupled with V [k+]) in hygiene, cleaning; one likes being neat and being pedantic.

Inquisitive investigative behavior when coupled with factor G (p+).

Eventually also an indication of a depressive mood.


          The following chart summarizes the main differences between the d- and d+ factors.

 

The d- and the d+ Factors

 

Contrasts between d- factor and d+ factor

d- factor

d+ factor

Oriented to the past

Oriented to the future

The real and imaginary mother

The substitute mother: the environment

Imagination, introversion

Reality, extraversion

At rest

Active

Conservatism

Love for the new

Nostalgia for the past

Hunt for the new

No change

Desiring change

Stay put

Get up and go

Mull over the past

Look to the future

Focus on the self, narcissism

Focus on possessing the other, a different kind of narcissism

Loyalty to objects

Disloyalty to objects

Strong attachment to one particular object

Desire to possess many objects

Sentimental love for objects; thus keeps them

Realistic evaluation of objects; thus, easily gets rid of them

Preserves collectibles

Always on the hunt for some new object for collection

Remains in the same place and job if possible

Likes to change jobs and places frequently

Likes rest

Likes movement

Anal #2: retention [Freud]

Anal #1: expulsion [Freud]

Freud’s description of the Anal Character: love for order, regularity, and sameness

Freud: the character enjoys anality, love for some disorder, irregularity, and differences

 

The d0 Factor

(d = depression)

 

Again, Susan Deri is an excellent source for analysis of the different factors and their combinations.  As always, the open, or zero, reaction for a factor indicates that the need of the person is finding some satisfaction whether in character, jobs, interests, relations, symptoms, or other outlets of the need in its original form.  In rare cases, the open reaction indicates lack of power behind the need.

In the case of open d, this person does not feel any insecurity about his attachments, so there is no anxious holding onto them or pursuit of them.  There is an indifference or even apathy toward attachments.  Whatever is available is O.K. or whatever one’s attachment wants to do is also acceptable.  “C’est la vie” or whatever happens, happens is the prevailing attitude.  If there are no great hindrances, this person’s casualness to material and concrete objects and persons can allow intellectual or artistic pursuits as Susan Deri states.

With the dropping out of tension in the anal-type relationships, either of d minus or d plus, then relationships based on the oral component of the contact drive (factor m) comes to the fore.  For example, when open d combines with m plus factor—the constellation for a normal and stable adult and very common—then the person lives in a stable and trustful relationship with the object supporting him.  With this stable situation, this type of person can does not have the worries of the anal types.  Jean Mélon in his works gives excellent overviews of all these matters.

 

The m Factor

(m = mania)

(Achtnich: Orality)

(Achtnich: All that that stands in connection with the mouth:  (1) sucking, drinking, eating, blowing [as with a musical instrument], kissing and (2) speaking and communication needs)

[See Susan Deri’s book, Szondi, Moser, and Webb’s book, and web sites for more information.]

 

The m+ Factor

(m = mania)

 

At the very beginning, Szondi connected the m factor to the Freudian concepts of orality.  Later, Szondi stressed the contact aspects of both the d and m factors based on the writings of Imre Hermann, a Hungarian psychoanalyst, who wrote about to cling and to let go [m factors] and to hold onto or to go on the search for new objects [d factors]. 

The m factor, as Susan Deri has pointed out, refers back to the very first period of orality that is connected to the baby’s use of the mouth for sucking, contact, and pleasure.   If the baby is frustrated during this period either because of some neglect by the mother and the situation or because of the baby’s strong oral needs, then when an adult the person will try to make up for this early frustration by trying to gain pleasure through very direct oral means such as drinking, eating, and being involved with food in some way.  Martin Achtnich calls this the Oral Nourishment [OR] factor.  The adult also attaches himself or herself to persons for pleasure in some oral manner like talking or conversing and thus communicating with others in a social manner.  In this situation, the m plus person clings to the other person or persons in a passive and dependent way.  Martin Achtnich calls this aspect of the m plus factor the OR speaking and communication needs [In German the word Rede means speaking; therefore OR].

The m plus person is optimistic about having his or her need for pleasure and support from persons and the environment itself.  The pictures of maniacs in the Szondi test are all excited and smiling or laughing.  This is a mild form of mania, called hypomania.  Susan Deri states that this mild form of mania truly represents the state of the person who is expecting to gain pleasure and support from everyone and the environment itself.  Ultimately, m plus is the glue that holds society together.  Most adults have m plus; that means that there is some tension and desire for satisfaction of this social need that motivates in a positive way people to be together.  That is why this m area is also called the contact drive.

Reality eventually sets in for the m plus person and the other person or environment does not satisfy fully the oral needs. The ultimate fear for m plus is to lose the emotional pleasure and support given by the other person or environment.  (The d plus fears the actual physical loss of the other person.)  The m plus person does not have great tolerance for frustration. Despite this, the m plus person is always hopeful that pleasure and support from those to which he or she is clinging will be forthcoming.  The m plus person in his or her mild version of mania is restless and desires many objects as sources of pleasure and support.  What ordinarily we think of mania is the exaggerated state of hyper- not hypo- mania that has entered into the pathological.

Orality, the m plus need, is, in many ways, the foundation of artistic endeavors and, again, shows how beneficial this factor can be when used constructively.

 

Occupations Satisfying the m Need

 

          Achtnich organizes the orality factor into two groups: (1) OR for speaking and communications [speech and language] and ON for nourishment needs.

 

          Factor OR: Speaking and Communication Needs, Speech, Language

 

[1]     to joke, to chatter, to tell, to narrate (master of ceremonies, cabaret master of ceremonies, fantastic or exaggerated story telling, using wit, humor, and narration)

[2]     to talk, to speak, to telephone, to report, to lecture, to recite (reporter, politician, radio or TV speaker, telephone speaker, concierge, speech teacher)

[3]     to greet, to welcome, to make contact (being in a partnership type of occupation, trade, salesperson, catering trade)

[4]     to discuss, to negotiate, to sell (salesperson, trader or negotiator, stockbroker, principal in a school, headmaster or headmistress, senior consultant, using salesperson’s talk)

[5]     to interpret, to translate (interpreter of foreign language, translator at congresses and conferences, focused on establishing understanding between partners)

[6]     to sing, to play a wind instrument [one that one must blow into], to sound (singer, wind instrumentalist)

[7]     to communicate, to give information, to transmit, to make known, to orient, to inform (giver of information, advisor, consultant, teacher, journalist, and a communicator for the questioner, the student, the customer)

[8]     to speak artistically, to recite, to disclaim (actor, reciter, dramatist, and writer, using speech and language and articulation)

 

Factor ON: Nourishment Needs

 

[1]     to eat, to drink, to eat sweets (nourishment materials and occupations concerned with drinks such as kitchens and hotels)

[2]     to test with taste buds, to sample food (wine tester, coffee tester, fruit tea or infusion salesperson)

[3]     to nourish, to feed, to give food and drink (restaurant worker, service employee, barkeeper, bar server [Also see h+: to server.])

[4]     to prepare food, to cook (cook, landlord, hotel owner and workers)

[5]     to produce food or foot stuffs (baker, pastry cook, maker of food and worker in food factory)

[6]     to sell food or food stuffs (food salespersons, railroad steward or stewardess [Also see h+: to server.])

 

The m- Factor

(m = mania)

 

We enter a different world from the m plus when we encounter m minus.  Whereas, the m plus tries to make up for his unhappy experiences and lack of pleasure and support, in his or her mind at least, by optimistically looking for happiness in his or her relations to persons and the environment, the m minus, who had the same frustrations in the early oral period as the m plus, denies that this occurred and refuses to be dependent on others.  This is the peak of independence but also a source of feelings of unhappiness no matter how well things appear to go.  Susan Deri discuses this thoroughly. 

The m minus can go in a positive or destructive direction.  On the positive side, the m minus person can be socially positive by being a supporter of someone in a bad situation as a mother would be for a child in bad circumstances.  However, the minus person expects that the one helped will return love in return.  This does not always happen.  And the m minus person has a high tolerance for frustration and basically a pessimistic outlook toward obtaining pleasure and love from others and the environment.  On the negative side, m minus can appear in those—such as juvenile delinquents and other criminals and anti-social people—who experienced frustration in the early oral period and now take out their revenge through destructive ways on people and the environment.  These m minus persons have given up on any hope of getting oral pleasures and support from people around them. 

 

Achtnich: Interpretations for Negative m

 

The denied factor

the native, original

factor need   

the defense directed

against

the working out of

the defense is

a reaction formation

-O [m-]Orality

-OR [m-]

Speaking, communication

language,      

speaking,

contact needs

contact readiness,

pleasure in speaking

inhibition in speaking,

contact inhibition

-ON [m-]

Nourishment

nourishment

impulse

 

nourishment needs

hater-of-life attitude,

emaciation [anorexia],

disturbances in

digestive track

           

            In the next table are the complete defense and the reversion for the m need opposite one another:

 

Minus Factor

Complete defense

Reversion

-O [m-]

Absent in the testee are friendliness and the wish for social contact. One will not work under people and seeks occupations in which one works all alone.  When ON [m+] is denied strongly, there exists eventually the danger in the direction of alcoholism similar to the one who avoids such occupations in which these dangers are hidden.

The picture with o as a secondary factor always shows the needs for speaking and contact with others.  Thus these directions are sought and affirmed. Here the difference between a picture with O [primary factor] and o [secondary factor] can be clarified.

[Note: Every picture in the Achtnich’s Occupation test has a primary and a secondary factor.]

 

The m0 Factor

(m = mania)

 

Whenever there is a zero or no more than one plus or one minus—an open reaction—for a factor that means that the need of the factor is being satisfied in some manner whether in its original native form—in this case orality—or in an occupation, a choice of some kind, a symptom, an interest, and other ways both positive and negative. 

Susan Deri emphasizes that there is an exaggeration here.  Unlike m plus that wishes to cling and to derive pleasure from one person or activity, the open m goes to the extreme of having as many persons and activities as possible.  There’s a frenetic quality of rushing from one person to another.  On the outside, this open m person is charming, a bon vivant, a party-type person, a seeker after pleasures to fill up every moment.  Relationships are shallow.  Gamblers would be the ones who challenge fate and can’t stop from playing.

  Susan Deri notes that the open m can be found in writers, public speakers, and actors.  But one cannot determine by the open m exactly how the oral behavior will manifest itself.

The aggressiveness of this open m person in pursuit of pleasure and support derives from the second oral stage called the sadistic-oral or cannibalistic stage. 

 

Susan Deri has an excellent summary chart on the differences between the d factor and the m factor relationships and attribute [Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice, 1949, p. 135]:

 

(m) factor ORALITY

(d) factor ANALITY

Objects wanted for the pleasure to be derived from them; for the support they can give, for cling­ing to them.

Objects wanted for the sake of owning them; to accumulate them and to control them.

 

Essentially passive relation to the object. Related to the h factorial object relationship.

Active manipulative relation to the object. Related to the s fac­torial object relationship.

 

Impatience and restlessness in re­gard to reaching a goal object.

Perseverance and persistence in regard to reaching a goal.

 

Ability to give love and emotional support to the love object (through identification with the giving mother and through identification with the person who needs love and support).

 

Tendency to overwhelm love object with material gifts.

 

More possibility for sublimation without resorting to the defense mechanism of reaction forma­tion (no exaggerated. anticath­exis needed in sublimating oral impulses).

More need for resorting to reac­tion‑formation in order to over­come the originally aggressive attitude toward objects; hence, the compulsive quality of "anal" type of love.

 

Sixteen Combinations for the Contact Vector

[See Szondi, Moser, and Webb book for detailed analyses.]

[Extract from L. Szondi, Experimental Diagnostics of Drives, English translation by Gertrude Aull]

 

C1  =          0 0              Childish, pleasure-seeking relationship to the world; curiosity

C2  =          0 +              Mature relationship to the world; fear of loss of the object

C3  =          0 -               Unhappy ties to the world; hypomanic reaction

C4  =          0 +/-          Unhappy state of living in a dual-union relationship

C5  =          - 0               Conservatism, loyalty, anal character

C6  =          - +               Incestuous love and hatred, extreme adherence to an idea

C7  =          -  -               Unrealistic adherence to a lost object

C8  =          - +/-           Incestuous adherence to the lost object

C 9  =         + 0              Unfaithful relationship

C10 =         + +             Simultaneous ties to two objects; bi-objectivity

C11 =         + +/-          Search for a new object after loss of the old; depression

C12 =         + -               Search for a new object after separation from the old

C13 =         +/- 0          Problematic, phobic tie

C14 =         +/- +         Bi-objectivity, search for a new object in spite of adherence

                                      to the old

C15 =         +/- -                    Unrealistic adherence to the old object, simultaneous search

                                                for a new object

C16 =         +/- +/-      Contact dilemmas, simultaneous loyalty and disloyalty

 

           

Szondi: Transformation of the Apparent Forms of Drive Factors:

Personality Vicissitudes Related to the Eight Drive Needs

 

Drive Vectors

 

C

Contact (or Circular) Drive

Drive Factors

d

(Depression)

Need to appropriate, to search  (Anal)

The factor (d) poses the question of preserving what one possesses (d-) or to move towards another object (d).

m

(Mania)

Need to cling dependently

(Oral)

The factor (m) shows how the subject reacts to the need to cling to the objects, to withdraw pleasure and support from it.

Drives Related to:

[Lots of these ideas are from pathoanalysis.]

 

The Relationship to the “Other”

 in so far as it passes through the mediation of the lost object

 

       Szondi thinks that all psyche, all human subjectivity, is formed starting from a more or less mythical or imaginary phase where the subject because of his initial imbecility and total ignorance finds himself at one with the person who feeds him; at this stage this person can only be another being for us only.  This is a Dual-Union. [k0 p-]  When one has separated from the ancient dual partner, one will meet this partner as an object.  But there is always the longing for the mythical union.   Separation from the dual union is always felt as a loss and a rejection.  Object love will always be marked by uncertainty and precariousness because he has to recognize the limits to this love, whereas there were no limits in the dual union love.

      The contact (or Circular) vector reflects the way in which a subject stands in the world, how he maintains himself, without being carried away by the sensations that he experiences.  It is the insertion of the individual into his surroundings.  It is the relation with the others that is at stake.  It indicates the relation of the individual to the world.  It concerns the quality of the relation: oral (m) or anal (d).

      It is the vector of environment, sensations (mood) in connection with the world around.

Other Descriptions

d+: tendency to acquisition to the disadvantage of others, search for new objects, disloyalty

d-:  tendency to self-denial for the sake of all people, loyalty, anality (anal erotic, retention).

m+: tendency to cling to the old object (thing, person); orality, hedonism.

m-: tendency to separate, to loneliness

Phylogenetic, animalistic

To go on a search after nourishing love objects

Clinging to the mother, onto the tree, etc.

 

Freudian: Early childhood-pregenital

Partial drives

Anality

Anal erotic

Orality

Oral erotic

Psychic Characteristics

anxious, resentment, ill feeling, constant

  pessimism

anxious clinging to anyone

complaining with varied defenses of situation

disdain for life

thinking of death

unfit or incapable in action, decision,

   resolutions and work

inhibited, holding back

scrupulousness, formal, fussy,

   complicatedness, self-disparagement, readiness to weep, sentimentality

holding onto old objects

constant deploring about objects and

  valuables, which have been lost in reality

  or in pathological fantasy

endless complaining

unproductive, incapable to discuss things,

 renouncing oneself and the world

almost stiff, nearly anxious lamentations

narrow-mindedness

rising conscientious, self-critic, self-accusation, self-torment

 

Anality: constipation, not eating, not speaking, saving, economical, greed, constant readiness to criticize

 

 

carefree cheerfulness, constant optimism, good-heartedness, warm humanity fraternization, small town worldliness, enjoyment

many activities, varied events

close to life, enjoyment of life

hedonism

constantly seeking after new sources of enjoyment

energy, great work and life capability

desire for undertakings

good reality sense, realism, materialism

ease in acquiring money

frivolity, carelessness, squandering money, making debts, bearing of life’s problems with lightness and good humor

exaggerated freeness and not being bound

  in object relationships: ease, facility,

  weakness

inconsistency, inconsiderate, instinctuality, irrationalism, unsteadiness

good nature, sense of humor, facetiousness,  readiness to laugh

talkativeness, gift for speaking

ability to convince, readiness to debate, hastiness, quick anger with quick fading

versatility

unrest

broad-mindedness

constantly making plans, riches to fall into, freedom from remorse

lack of self-criticism

irresponsibility

being religious without holding to form or

  rituals

Orality: eating, drinking, sucking on candies, smoking, readiness to use tongue, kissing, eventually oral sexuality

I. Pathologic, extreme, and negative manifestations:

(a) Drive disorders

1. Depression

2. Melancholia

3. Agitated depressive neurasthenia

4. unsteadiness

5. Fetishism

6. simple out-of-humor neuroses, depressive cycloid

7. Disposition to diabetes

A simple mixed form: catatonia form of

   melancholia

Manic-depressive psychoses: changing

   manic and depressive conditions

Mixed form of paranoid quarrelling depressions, mostly with senile ill-feeling (resentment), suspicion, anxiety about going to ruin

1. Mania,

2. Hypomania, simply being happy,         euphoria

3. Agitated hypomanic neurasthenia

4. Alcoholism, addiction

5. Nymphomania, satyriasis

6. Predisposition to diabetes, bladder  illnesses, formation of stones (gall or hard stones, etc)

A frequent form of illness is inflative paranoid mania

 (b) Delinquency

Violations against property, theft (mostly within the family as compensation for the lost love), instability

Swindling, fraud, bigamy, dipsomania, imposter

(c) Suicide

Sedatives (drugs)

Alcohol poisoning

II. Physiologic, normal socialized manifestations:

(1) Drive symptoms

1. Searching for objects (d+)

2. Acquisitiveness

3. Appropriateness

4. Rivalry

5. Anal tendencies

1. Clinging to a specific person, family, religion, social group, race, nation

2. Oral tendencies

3. Close adherence to acquired objects

(2) Maturity, Adult

(a) Acquisition impulse, changing impulse (d+)

(b) impulse to cling, perservence tendency, collecting need (d-)

a) making safe impulse for the acquired object: orality; impulse, thus, to accept and to be confirmed as one is  (m+)

(b) separation impulse (m-)

(3). (a) Socialization

(b) Character

(a) d+: acquisition sense, eternal seeking, inquisitive, curious, innovation seeking, untrue, disloyal, pleasure in squandering, wasting, liberality, generosity, immoderate, extravagant, unsteadiness

(b) d-: true, loyal, faithfulness, pleasure in saving and collecting, covetousness, avarice, stinginess, remuneration joy, conservatism, pleasure in criticizing, melancholy, perseverance impulse

(a) m+:  clinging impulse, security impulse, enjoyment pleasure, pleasure impulse, serenity, cheerfulness, good nature, capriciousness, anxiety about losing the object

(b) m-: loneliness, separation or isolated, deserted, neglected, hasty, snatching, unreal binding to the world, inclination to addiction, unsteadiness, grab everything and pleasure since one sees no value in anything (mania)

 

 

 

(4) Occupation, Professional field: Paroxysmal occupation field

Contact professions, Depression professions (Anal)

Contact professions, Mania professions

(Oral)

(a)Chief Drive Need

Object and value or worth seeking

Hanging on to the collected objects

Object need. Clinging and seeking objects and respectively throwing them away.

 

(b) Chief sense, reality perception

Smell

taste

(c) Professional object

(a) real worth: gold, money, art treasures

(b) literature and art works

(c) entrails, bowels

 

Everything that can be the source of oral pleasure

(d) (1) Professional means (2) professional activity

To collect, to gather one after the other, to dress, to attire, to ornament, to preserve

(a) speech organ: movement of the mouth and tongue

(b) color mixing , costs (expenses, charges)

(e) Professional place or location

(a) bank, theatre office, antique dealing, antique shop, museum

(b) water closet, bathroom, sewer

Public house , inn, restaurant, bar

(f) occupation solutions: Occupation, Professional field Socialization in a profession, occupation

painter, house-painter

banker, pawn-broker, lender employee

refuge collector, garbage collector, street sweeper, toilet cleaner, bowels and leather worker

chemist purifier

journalist

collectors: stamp collector, antique collector, magazines, market, pawnshop dealer auctioneer, dry-cleaner, painter, exterminator, furrier

Cook,

innkeeper, coffee house employee, bar

   tender mixer, wine taster

Music: horn instruments, jazz

Film, music school, concert office supervisor

Waiter, bartender, cook,

 jazz band, musician, buyer,

linguist, speech teacher, linguist, salesman

landlord

Broker, salesman, purchaser

III. Socially Positive manifestations:

Drive Symptoms

 

Sublimation

1. Self-denial for the sake of the common good

2. Loyalty

 

National economy, economic humanist

Separation from a specific person, family, religion, social group, race, or nation for the sake of the common good

 

Sublimation: Speech arts and Art in general

Occupations

as physician: bowels specialist, Art dealer, critic

antique dealer, museum employee, art collector

painter of pictures

Politician, orator, artist, speech teacher, dentist, dental surgeon

Money-making: banker, stockbroker, director of firms and businesses, entrepreneur

Representative in parliament, union representative, delegate

Artistic activities: singer, organizer of art exhibits, art dealer, leader of a concert bureau, director of a music school, lyric poet, etc.

 

 

Resources

 

English Works:

Deri, Susan, Introduction to the Szondi Test: Theory and Practice, 1949 [Deri was a Szondi worker and has excellent interpretations of his test.]

Hughes, Albert E., Your Fate in Your Handwriting: How to analyze yourself, 1978 [This books gives graphological and descriptions of the eight factors of Szondi.]

Hughes, Richard A., Cain’s Lament: A Christian Moral Psychology, 2001 [Has some good material on Szondi’s thinking but not as good as the Ancestor book.]

—, Return of the Ancestor, 1992 [This gives a good survey of Szondi’s thinking without being too technical.  A scholarly approach.]

—, The Radiant Shock of Death, 1995 [This explores the connection between the paroxysmal experience and paranoia to death, using the ideas of Szondi. Excellent exploration and very readable.]

Johnston, Arthur C., Szondi Test: Its Interpretation and Graphological Indicators, [self-published], 2006

—, Talk on Shame and Shamelessness, [This is a talk I gave several years ago.  It is an exposition of the Szondi hy+ (shamelessness) and hy- (shame) factors. Léon Wurmser, whom I used a lot, was a follower of Szondi and wrote about criminals and their traits shown by the Szondi test.]

Kenmo, Rolf, Let the personality bloom: A blue thread towards life balance in your living space…, 2005 [Kenmo presents Szondi’s and Achtnich’s ideas in an easy to understand form, using names like Power for Sadism and Relations for Homosexuality.  He has applied Szondi’s ideas to one’s personal development and occupations.  The book is for sale by him for $50 and his tests start at $150 and drop to $50 for additional tests, all available on his internet sites: www.humanguide.se and info@humankonsult.se. His book is translated into several languages]

Mélon, Jean, Course on Szondi, 1998 (translated from French to English by Arthur C. Johnston, 2005) [This is an excellent book on Szondi’s ideas in depth. Mélon represents pathoanalysis, a combination of psychoanalysis and Szondi’s ideas without any use of his gene theory. Available on The Szondi Forum: http://www.szondiforum.org.]

Schneider, Carl D., Shame, Exposure, and Privacy, 1977 [Another book on hy+ and hy-.]

Sonnemann, Ulrich , Handwriting Analysis As a Psychodiagnostic Tool, 1964 [The best interpretations of Ludwig Klages’ work in English.  This is an excellent book in every way except its readability.]

Szondi, Leopold, Experimental Diagnostics of Drives, translated by Gertrude Aull, 1952 [Some charts used in the talk came from this translated work.]

Szondi, Lipot; Moser, Ulrich; Webb, Marvin W., The Szondi Test in Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment, 1959 [A technical discussion of the Szondi test.]

Tulloch, Alex, Szondi’s Theory of Personality in Handwriting, 1994 [ISBN 0913700 1] [This book literally translated sections from the two French books Graphologie et Test de Szondi. Well-done overall.]

Wurmser, Léon, The Mask of Shame, 1981 [This explores the hy+ and hy- factors without mentioning them.]

 

Foreign Works:

Achtnich, Martin, Der Berufsbilder-Test [Occupations Pictures-Test], 1979, Hans Huber [Excellent for real insights into Szondi’s ideas as applied to occupations. Translations into English by Arthur C. Johnston are included in this present work.]

Beeli, Armin, Psychotherapie-Prognose mit Hilfe der “Experimentellen Triebdiagnostik”, 1965, Verlag Hans Huber

Grämiger, Ines, Lehrbuch der Schicksalspskychologischen: Graphologie, 2001 [self-published] [This book applies Szondi’s ideas to the whole (Gestalt) and the particulars of handwriting.]

Lefebure, Fanchette, Gille-Maisani, Jean-Charles, Graphologie et Test de Szondi: Tomb 1: le Moi, 3rd ed., 1990; Tomb 2: dynamique des pulsions, 2nd ed., 1990]; [The authors gave the Szondi test to hundreds of people and obtained writing samples at the same time to find the graphological indicators of the Szondi factors.]

Schneider, E., Der Szondi-Versuch, 1952, Verlag Hans Huber

Szondi, Leopold, Die Triebentmischten, 1980, Verlag Hans Huber

—, Freiheit und Zwang im Schicksal des Einzelnen, 2nd ed., 1977, Verlag Hans Huber

—, Kain Gestalten des Bosen, 1969, Verlag Hans Huber

—, Lehrbuch der Experimentellen Triebdiagnostik, Band I, 1972, Verlag Hans Huber [Up-to-date information from this book was translated and given in the charts on the four vectors.]

—, Moses Antwort auf Kain, 1973, Verlag Hans Huber

—, Schicksalsanalyse: Wahl in Lieb, Freudschaft, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod, 3rd ed., 1965, Schwabe & Co. [Lots of information given in the charts on the four vectors were translated by Arthur C. Johnston from this book.]

—, Schicksalsanalytische Therapie, 1963, Verlag Hans Huber

—, Szondi-Test: Experimentelle Triebdiagnostik, Test Band, Verlag Hans Huber, 1981

—, Triebpathologie: Elemente der Exakten Triebpsychologie und Triebpsychiatrie, 1952, Verlag Hans Huber

 

World Wide Web Addresses:

British Academy of Graphology: http://www.graphology.co.uk/scriptor/Theory.htm/ [This is the page for Alex Tulloch’s book.  Also from here you can go to Scriptor Publisher’s books for an interesting list of books on graphology.]

Szondi Institute: http://www.szondi.ch/ [This is the official site for the Szondi Institute.]

Web site for all kinds of articles and information on Szondi and his test: http://www.szondiforum.org.  This site is edited by Leo Berlips, a long-time supporter of Szondi’s and his followers’ ideas and works.  [Click on Articles (Foreign Languages and English) for abundant information on Szondi and his test.  Particularly get Ego Vector 2, 3, 4. This site is now putting up Susan Deri’s work and English translations of important French and German authors in English.  This is the place to go on the Web.

http:// home.tiscali.be/vuc-roma is the web site of pathoanalysis and has many valuable articles and information on Szondi and psychoanalysis.  This site is opening new possibilities for Szondi’s ideas with the exclusion of those on the gene theory.

 

 

                                                         



[1] Jean Mélon in his Course on Szondi pointed out that the pictures depicting homosexuality are really those of hermaphrodites [bisexuals].  In other works of Szondi, he clearly represents these individuals as hermaphrodites [bisexuals].