Lipot Szondi (1893–1986).

Abstract

province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the eighth of nine siblings and half-siblings. His father, a meditative and deeply religious individual who greatly influenced Szondi's life, was a shoemaker who neglected his occupation to read Hebrew from morning to night. Consequently, the family was wretchedly poor and lived in very primitive conditions. Later, the family moved to Budapest where Szondi's father became an assistant rabbi. On an academic scholarship, and further financed by his oldest step-brother, Szondi matriculated in 1911 in the Pazmany-Peter-Universitate to study medicine, working in his spare time as a clinician in the neurological and psychiatric service of the Graf Apponyi Poliklinik. He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Budapest in 1919.In 1923, Szondi began his studies of the internal bodily secretions, described in his copious writings of that period, and became chief of the Experimentelle Psychologisches Laboratorium der Hochschule fuer Heilpedagogik in Budapest, which became an impetus for his later writings in educational psychology.Szondi early addressed the German characterologic assumption that within the frame of the total personality there is a nucleus of innate, permanent psychological features that cannot be modified by environmental factors. The results of his studies, based on both genetics and psychoanalysis, led to the theory of genotropism and its manifestation through operotropism as detailed in his 1944 work Wahl in Leibe, Freundschafi, Beruf, Krankheit und Tod(Choice in Love, Friendship, Occupation, Illness and Manner of Death). This work, which encompasses the entire spectrum of human existence, won Szondi international fame.Space permits only a brief sketch of Szondian psychology, recorded in 25 books and tracts and 350 journal articles. Genotropism means that through the latent, as opposed to the manifest genes, individuals are attracted to each other when there is a similar genotypal structure, and operotropism means that there is a natural propensity to choose an occupation consonant with the dynamic action of one's latent genes. These concepts have great value in educational and vocational guidance.In the course of the development of his basic theory of drives, Szondi discovered the familial unconscious, a

Professional psychology in the Hungarian People's Republic: An impression.

“…Psychological tests that are frequently used are the Wechsler intelligence scales, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Rorschach, figure drawings, and the Szondi (Webb, 1987); perhaps a certain nationalistic pride has entered into the continued use of the Szondi in Hungary because the test has not been widely used in the United States after unfavorable reviews in the 1950s (Reisman, 1982, pp. 276, 323).…”