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his work with his clients. Introduction to Leopold Szondi's Exposition of the Ego and it's functions. as a theory derived from the projections of various subjects taken across a varied social and clinical samples, by primarily by the use of the Szondi Test Ensemble and the European nomenclature for eight assumed as fundamental psychiatric conditions (as accepted through most of the 20th century.) The "EGO THEORY" of the analysis of vicissitudes, (Vicissitudes, being Dr Szondi's term for his system of understanding the human drives which he attributed to all humans. Therefore also called a "Drive Psychology". The Ego being but one part. The part most unique to mankind that differentiates him for amimal species. The later theory was based upon a number of postulates derived from several decades of research using, first, genealogical studies and later, the Szondi Test Useage Dr. Leopold Szondi invented while a university professor, endocrinologist, education statistics researcher and psychiatrist in his native Hungary and later, Swiss, private clinic, The Szondi Institute, Geneva Switzerland. The form and theory of the projective test Dr. Szondi invented, were based on a hypothesized "genic affinity" that in respect to the Ego/Self Vector was represented by the articulation between the between the heredity lines of Catatonic and Paranoid Gene lines, therefore unique to humans, who as far as we know, are the only species with these two psychiatric defined mind disorders. Catatonia and Paranoia. or more exactly, the impulse based traits, strivings and functions they represent, for example Catatonia carried narcissism and key aspects of using learning and guidance functions developed through its introjection functions, where Paranoia carried the desire and impulse drive for seeking participation largely through conscious choices (as opposed to pre-set instincts of animal specicies) and the reaching to life satisfying participations and choices though intelegent thinking, accomplished largely by using the introjections stored up as the guiding/modifying force as an individual lives out his drive needs, with certain necessary restraints also internalized and preserved at some earlier time of development. It is under the influence of both, his internalizations as already introjected restraints and adaptations to the pressures of his social environment that the civilized adaptation occurs. It should not be overlooked that mankind's cerebral dominant nervous system had to evolve as a foundation to make thinking, speech, symbolism and the introjection/projection function possible. Thus the Ego/Self of Szondi is explained as always the joint inherent articulation between the impluse factors, with Catatonia and Paranoia, the psychiatric conditions, only being exaggerated forms of an normal function system. It was from the finding's of the Szondi Test that these two "Factors" could through following the correct test sequence procedure, could filtered out from subjects choices evidence suggesting how that subject used the two functions. This was when transcriped to the grid Dr. Szondi designed became recognized as if 16 styles or modes of handling the functions of the Ego, {Sch}, which also would change at different ages and circumstances. Szondi argueed the Ego severved a bridging function between a person's other impulses and again the self to the larger world. It is these choice made grids, that Szondi Test students mostly focus on, usually with the goal to better understand of their client's issues and to being more precise in their therapy work focus. It seems useful to see the various settings that the Szondi Test filter's out as representing, as making visible things, only wildly guessed at by earlier theoretical workers. It seem a valuable moderinization to vizualize each of the 16 Ego/I SZ setting the test filters out is something like a "style sheet" (as barrowed from web page work), where we set a style to handle content, without knowing exactly the content that the style sheet is to style. To represent the Ego/Self, as [Sch] (or Scizophrene based) the Szondi Test ensemble uses facial photos of those [k] and [p] that were from a gene line who themselves suffered these specific psychiatric disorders and which at the time of the photos were clinically manifested the form of disorder clearly, and met practical use experiments to serve as reagent photos for the test ensemble. A subject is presumed to like or dislike these reagent photos because of stromata of his existing Ego impulses somehow resonate (genic affinity) related to thehe striving the photos represent, as the exist at that time, and may change as internal dynamic change. In the Victor [Sch], do to the arrangement of the test material, then permits 16 possible Ego setting to be faltered out and become objects of study and interpretation. While this opens up a new view of the Ego one needs to be aware the filtering out also may involve this other drives pressing for satifaction and that this model of the Ego/Self may be more like style sheets of this aspect of mind work functions devoid of specific content. Content (from the therapists standpoint) later to be added, though various therapy techniques. It is useful to conceptualize the 16 Ego [Sch] each as modified types of mind and thinking guidance system of humans.chagable with age, experience and life issues and pressures. These are functions also using memory, words/speech symbols and thoughts. to then extend flexibly to participate in life. These settings have also have flexibility and changability range, set by bio-hereditary nervous and endocrine system which both suppors and limits these internal functional controls. not totally dependant on fixed inflexible instincts, as is the case with animal species. Dr. Szondi believed this worked as a projective test that a person will like, dislike or avoid these photoes that serrve as regents to provoke theses choices as if a mirror of the test subjects inpluses and the strivings they repsent at the time of the test sample and which may change as the mind state of the subject chages. Also this test is non-verbal and it was also speculated that the test may somehow work as if an archaic language of choice that was hidden by the the later development of humans. The common usage of Ego as defined by Sigmund Freud, in his well known, "Tri-part" concept or Ego, Id and Super-ego. For Szondi the Ego was Schizophrine Inheritance [Sch] and represented mankind's untimate develpoment a beyound animal inheritance. I is reprented in the two major thought disorders, Cattonia and paranois, the maind disorres tjhat reprent disorder of the Ego. Freuds super-ego mas replaced with a four Factor censor function locared in the strivings not only in his [Sch] Vector but in the [P]Paroxymal/Affect Vector, together he placed the "Middle" of the SZ grid. and the Sexual and contact Vector closer to the nature of animal-like instincts at the left and right of the SZ grid. Where Freud argued for Ego instincts moderating the sexual. Szondi argued for the grid 'middle' moderating the more animal like grid border positions or 'rand' in German Szondi's view, in respect to his test concept is differently based, points to a mankinds final evolution to be a thinking self-guiding creature as corresponding to a these developments being genetically encoded in the two SZ Vectors, he called the middle ones, the Paroxyimal/Affect [P]and the [Sch] that serve to moderate the "rand or edge Vectors", the Sexual/Gender, and the Contact/Cyclic, with their gene set preservation of the species and social bonding functions. I touch on this here because the two middle Vector taken together are a gene-heredity censor system we can demonstrate the basis of in this system. Which suggests, but does not prove there is a functional basis for claiming the existence of a Super-Ego, beyond, the traditional explanations of memory, imitation, conditioning and learning. The 'style sheets' of the 'Super-Ego may also be detectable in a four censor function visible when the middle Paroyxymal/affect Vector and The Sch Ego/self are viewd together as 4 tyoe of cenoring powers. Szondi has designated the middle as the censorial system, that portion of the personality which is concerned with the individual's system of values, his attitudes and his orientation toward life. Moreover, it is concerned with making the decisions that will determine the individual's behavior. This is an internal authority close enought to claim a relationshp if not the same thing. has particularized the censorial system as follows: e = the ethical censor hy =the moral censor k = the censor of reality p = the censor of ideals Each of which takes on certain directional qualities, when abcsent, ambivalent, like or dislike, when a loaded choice. The inerpretive meanings to taken up in a later dialogs as on the basis of examples as we run across useable examples, as this aspect of Szondi's insight was left incomplete, Later when we eamine the forms of existance worked out mainly by the researchers at the Louvaine University. The articulation of what Dr. Szondi believed was the neuro-inheritance formed relationship existing between a person's Schizophrene inheritance, which was built from two functional oppositions and is age, hormonal and circumstance modifiable. He saw the pairing of Catatonia= [k] and Paranoia = [p], as being the Ego's genetic based foundations. While today one can make many arguments against accepting that premise, it is difficult to disprove in total. Also the mapping of the human Genome has renewed interest in this concept. Ultimately it is, as Szondi said himself about his larger system "..don't reject my theories until you see for yourself, how well they work." His theory of an ancestor back derived systems of drives, impulses, strivings, and needs is speculative and interesting but to use the Szondi Test as a practical instrument for counseling and therapy, with an intention to expose a client person's dynamics and thereby have usable clues to work from, one do not need to claim total proof of every interpretrive finding, one only needs to use, a practical logic based on reconciling the test findings with observations or other known facts. This is also the situation with the use of some other projective tests and many inventories in use to day that are aimed at being probes useful in aiding the counselor/therapist in |
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