Léopold Szondi, test & cards marked 'Szondi Test "Experimentelle Triebdiagnostik" Copywright 1947 by Verlag Hans Huber Bern Schweiz - Suisse - Switzerland Printed in Switzerland' with test papers and score cards, in original blue cloth covered card case

The Szondi test involves presenting the participant with a set of photographs, who is then asked a series of questions about how they feel towards them. Szondi theorised that based on their answers, the participant will find out about their unconscious mind, such as why they choose to work in certain professions, or what their childhood was like. Although the usefulness of this test is widely discredited in the modern day, it is a valuable piece of psychological and scientific history. It is the early pioneers of scientific research in the field, like Szondi, that have led to the understanding of the human mind that we have today.

Léopold Szondi, a Hungarian psychologist and psychiatrist (1893-1986), is most famous for his namesake test. Szondi was involved in the early days of psychoanalysis, with Freud informing his earliest works. While serving as a Professor and Director at the Royal Hungarian Institute for Psychopathology and Psychotherapy, Szondi synthesised his theories of personality (based on biological factors) with Jungian-esque ideas of the “familial unconscious”. It was this work that led to the creation of the book in this auction. Szondian Psychoanalysis is a relatively obscure field of Psychology, mainly due to the suppression of his work by the Nazi regime, and his subsequent incarceration in Bergen-Belsen.