Fate Analysis Concept

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"Fate is the integration of body and soul, heredity and motives," I "and Spirit, this worldly and otherworldly, all personal and interpersonal phenomena." L. Szondi

Fate analysis - This is the direction of depth psychology, which makes conscious the unconscious claims of the ancestors of the individual. In other words, the individual is confronted with the unconscious possibilities of his own destiny and with the choice of the best form of existence.

The concept of fate analysis was developed by the Hungarian psychologist and psychiatrist Leopold Szondi. This concept is based on Freud's psychoanalysis, where the main attention is paid to the individual unconscious, and Jung's analytical psychology, in which the main emphasis is on the collective unconscious. However, fate analysis goes much further than these ideas, the main emphasis of this concept is on the study of the phenomena of the so-called family or generic unconscious, the main feature of which is its manifestation in a person's choices.

The concept of fate analysis was originally developed in the context of genetics. Regarding the history of its origin, Szondi writes: “I've asked myself over and over, what might be the recurring latent genetic tendencies that bring partners together in marriage or love affairs? Why does each of them choose this particular person and not another person as the object of their love? Why does a person choose this person as his friend, and not another? Why do people choose this particular profession for themselves? The answers to these questions were important … Just so, from the dust-dry study of heredity, I came to a surprisingly interesting and all-consuming study of fateful situations such as love relationships, marriage, choice of friends and profession. I became a "fate analyst." This statement by Szondi serves as the starting point for the birth of Scientific Fate Analysis.

In his study "Analysis of marriage unions" (1937) Szondi scientifically substantiated the assumption that the preferences of healthy and sick people are due to their genetic, inherited traits. It is noteworthy that by the time the book was published, his test, which later became known as the Szondi Test, was completely ready in the form it is known today. It turns out that Szondi began work on his test back in 1925, when he was in the Ranschburg laboratory. Once, having met with the twins - the children of his good friends, Szondi showed them photographs of some people. The children sincerely expressed their sympathy and antipathy for the people in these portraits. Next time Szondi brought other photographs and asked: “Who do you like better? And who is unpleasant? " This was repeated several more times. Each time, children expressed sympathy for some portraits, and antipathy for others. Szondi transferred his experiment to the clinic and began showing these photographs to his patients. For the purity of the experiment, he supplemented the portraits with other photographs with images of people (but not faces). Gradually, specific photographic portraits began to be identified, to which patients with one diagnosis or another gave similar reactions of sympathy and antipathy - regularities began to appear. Szondi realized that for a specific photographic portrait, the patients - carriers of a specific diagnosis - gave either a reaction of sympathy or antipathy. These were photographs of his half-brothers and sisters. After that, systematic work began on creating a test. In his private correspondence with colleagues, he asked to send him photographs of various patients, the diagnosis, anamnesis and fate of which were known in detail. Szondi selected only 48 of several thousand photographs, which still make up the test apparatus.

Having answered for himself the question of why people choose each other, Szondi discovered that genotropism (unconscious choice) can extend not only to the sphere of love and marriage, but also to other areas of human life. Again, a lot of questions arose. Why is it manifested in some in the choice of a partner or spouse, while in others in the choice of a disease? Why do some happily choose a profession and become highly qualified professionals, while others commit suicide? Why does a completely healthy and talented relative appear in the line of mentally ill descendants? Questions, questions, questions … So a new stage of Szondi's scientific work began - the development of a fate-analytical doctrine.

In explaining these amazing manifestations of genotropism, Szondi turns to the already well-known concept of the genetic load of G. Möller. Szondi noted that from the point of view of fate analysis, the genetic burden can be viewed as a "clan burden", which contains the negative and positive potential for the development of a particular representative of the genus. Szondi focuses on the fact that adaptive forms of behavior are inherited and the infant already in the genotype has a set of adaptive reactions. And it is they who determine the development of the individual's psyche in a certain direction, given by his ancestors. These adaptive reactions are deep existential needs characteristic of all people, but their specificity, strength, forms of satisfaction are determined in a particular individual by the characteristics of each particular kind. So, in the field of depth psychology, Leopold Szondi introduces the concept "Generic unconscious" - a peculiar form of the ancestor's claims to be completely repeated in the life of his descendant "… in the same form of existence in which she manifested herself one or more times in the line of the entire genus." The Szondi test becomes the main tool for studying the hidden patterns of the generic unconscious and gives rise to a new turn in Szondi's work - Experimental diagnosis of impulses.

To substantiate his teaching, Lipot Sondi needed to solve a rather complex methodological problem that would cover, on the one hand, the integrity and unity of forms of human existence, and on the other, take into account all its diversity and wide variability of manifestations. It was necessary to propose a conceptual category in which the following components of human existence were simultaneously combined and revealed: biological and psychophysiological properties of the individual; social conditions of life of a person and his immediate environment; the conscious and spiritual sphere of the personality, as a factor in its development and formation. L. Szondi had to take into account the uniqueness and originality of each of these human "existences" and at the same time find a universal, uniting these forms of being equivalent, some kind of integrating concept, which, nevertheless, is present in each of them, having its own meaning …

That is why Szondi's concept is based on such a concept as “fate”. Fate encompasses all the possibilities of human existence. On the one hand, it is determined by predetermined factors: heredity ("genetic material") and fundamental needs ("nature of drives"), as well as social and mental-ideological environment. On the other hand, thanks to the sphere of I, a person can, within certain boundaries, make a free choice and determine his own destiny. Duty and freedom together make the destiny of the individual.

“We say: fate is a choice, and we distinguish between two types of actions associated with a choice. First, these are unconscious actions governed by hereditary inclinations. At this stage, the unconscious claims of the ancestors direct the person in the choice of love, friendship, profession, various forms of illness and the method of death. The part of fate that is unconsciously realized through the latent image of the ancestors we call generic imposed fate. Secondly, these are conscious actions that are directed by the personal "I" of the individual. This part of destiny is our personal self-chosen destiny. A generic imposed fate and a personal independently chosen (or - "I") fate constitute the integrity of fate."

From the point of view of the fate analysis concept, there are a number of factors that determine the structure of imposed and free fate:

• Hereditary claims images and figures of ancestors that act in the generic unconscious of the personality.
• The specific nature of awakenings, which also has a hereditary origin, but changes under the influence of the unconscious protective activity of the "I" during life and is expressed as individual needs and impulses.
• Social environment, contributing to the manifestation of some existential possibilities, but hindering the development of others.
• Mental environment, those. the worldview of the time in which the individual lives, as well as the intellectual abilities and talents that form and control his destiny.
• Conscious "I" with his desire for realization, power, the formation of ideals and "Super-I", which, under favorable circumstances, through free choice, overcomes the boundaries of imposed fate.
• Spirit with which you can achieve a free destiny.

A person comes into the world with a tangle of hereditarily conditioned contradictions of motives and structure of I. His personal task is to dissolve this tangle, to realize and build his own free destiny out of the conflicting "hereditary possibilities" of ancestors. However, this task, despite the existence of a choice, becomes, in a sense, insoluble for a person due to the fact that his life is limited by time frames, and it is not possible to verify the correctness of this or that choice in the future. Leopold Szondi saw the solution to this problem in the spiritual aspect - in the union of the Spirit with God, his concept is literally permeated with the aspects of faith and being. But, we will consider this issue in the next articles, since it is impossible to cover all aspects of the concept within the framework of one article, and in order to come to a holistic understanding of the picture, it is necessary to touch upon many questions that the founder of fate analysis once posed for himself.