Portrait Election Method

The “Portrait Election Method” or “Szondi Test” is a nonverbal projective personality test, which allows a researcher to investigate the sphere of basic human drives using self-reported reactions to human portraits. It defines the deepest regularities of human mental processes and activity in line with a specific theory of basic drives, and allows the detection of events in three time slices: present, past and future. The Szondi Test is one of the most effective psychodiagnostic tools because it uses projective techniques based on a comprehensive approach to personality assessment. The method can be useful in detecting latent threats and creating a behavioral profile of an individual.

The structure of Szondi’s test consists of eight aspects, reflecting four posited basic drives, known as “drive vectors”. In turn, each vector responds to two needs, referred to as “drive factors”. In the test, the respondent must choose which they consider the most sympathetic and least sympathetic portraits of men and women from the images provided. Each portrait reflects in the most acute form the manifestation of one of the eight basic human urges. The choice of image thus indicates the respondentʼs affinity for or aversion to the various urges, allowing them to be profiled along these axes.

The Portrait Election Method is a scientific achievement of Lipot Szondi, a Swiss-Hungarian psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. In the course of scientific research and practical application of the Szondi test, Dr. Oleg Maltsev, head of the International Schicksalsanalyse Community Research Institute, developed 17 more methods of interpreting the Szondi test, which significantly expanded the areas of application of this technique.

The methods developed by Oleg Maltsev for interpreting the Szondi test allow us to decipher how an individual’s unconscious motivations are reflected in his visible behavior and how they influence his choices and decisions.

The test can reveal information hidden from both the person and others about the true motives and springs of a personʼs actions, internal conflicts and how to solve them, the level of anxiety and the presence of psychological or physiological stress, psychological dispositionsto subordination or domination, sociability or reticence, aggressiveness or friendliness, and to forecast the behavior and condition of the person.

Thus, the Szondi test is a versatile, multi-purpose tool for identifying hidden threats in the context of security, for predicting possible insider threats, and for the forensic psychological analysis of information security crimes committed in companies, public organizations, political structures and other structures.

Materials on the subject:

Testing methodology

Education

Форма для связи