The Szondi test is a picture-based personality test created by the Hungarian psychiatrist Leopold Szondi (1893–1986). In its full form it shows 48 photographs of psychiatric patients, arranged in six sets of eight faces. For each set you pick the two faces you like most and the two you dislike most. Szondi believed those quick, gut-level reactions expose drives we keep hidden from ourselves, including tendencies he thought ran in families.
Below you can try a simplified one-set version using the eight portraits above, read what each choice was traditionally said to reveal, and then see what decades of research concluded. Spoiler: it is a fascinating piece of psychology history, not a reliable measure of who you are.
Who Leopold Szondi was
Szondi was born in 1893 in Nyitra, then part of Hungary and today Nitra in Slovakia. He trained as a physician in Budapest and became interested in a question that occupied much of his career: why people are drawn to particular partners, friends, jobs and even illnesses. His answer was a theory he called Schicksalsanalyse, or fate analysis.
Fate analysis tried to find a path between Sigmund Freud's personal unconscious and Carl Jung's collective unconscious. Szondi proposed a third layer, a "familial unconscious", in which inherited impulses from our ancestors quietly steer our choices. Becoming aware of them, he argued, gives a person more freedom to follow or resist them.
His own life was shaped by history in the harshest way. In June 1944 he and his family were deported to Bergen-Belsen on the so-called Kasztner train, a group of Hungarian Jews whose release was negotiated with the Nazi authorities. They reached Switzerland in December 1944. Szondi spent the rest of his life in Zurich, where the Szondi Institute was founded in 1969 to keep his work and papers.
How the original test worked
Szondi developed the test in the 1930s and 1940s. Each of the 48 portraits showed a patient who had been diagnosed with one of eight conditions, which Szondi treated as eight basic "drive needs". In the order he used, the categories were:
- h – labelled homosexual (later accounts sometimes say "hermaphroditic")
- s – sadist
- e – epileptic
- hy – hysteric
- k – catatonic
- p – paranoid
- d – depressive
- m – manic
The eight drives were paired into four "vectors": sexual (h and s), paroxysmal (e and hy), ego (k and p) and contact (d and m). A tester would repeat the selection several times, often on different days, and look at the pattern: which categories you kept choosing, which you kept rejecting and which you ignored. A strong liking was read as a drive that is being satisfied; a strong dislike as a drive that is being pushed down.
Several of these labels reflect the medicine of the 1940s rather than today's. Homosexuality in particular is not a mental disorder; the American Psychiatric Association removed it from its diagnostic manual in 1973.
Three ideas you need for the interpretations
The traditional readings lean on three psychoanalytic defence mechanisms:
- Repression – pushing an uncomfortable wish or memory out of awareness so it stops causing distress.
- Denial (in this test's sense, close to what psychoanalysts call reaction formation) – living out the opposite of an impulse you do not want to admit, such as being extra gentle to cover aggression.
- Sublimation – channelling an unwanted impulse into something useful or admired, such as art, sport, a career or a harmless hobby.
The core assumption is simple: the faces that repel us mirror traits we once rejected in ourselves.
Try the one-set version
Look at the eight numbered portraits in the image at the top. Without thinking too long, pick the one person you would least like to run into alone on a dark street, the face that makes you most uneasy. Then find that number in the next section.
Keep two things in mind. First, this is one set out of the original six, and Szondi never read meaning from a single choice. Second, the readings below are interpretations from a disputed theory. They say nothing about whether you have a mental health condition, and they are best enjoyed as a conversation starter.
What each portrait was said to reveal
1. The sadist portrait
Possible repressed side: an early urge to control, dominate or belittle others, set aside in childhood because it felt unacceptable.
How it may show: outwardly you are gentle and helpful. When pushed, though, you resist quietly rather than openly: arriving late, dragging your feet or letting a mood speak for you. Bosses can find this hard to manage, and over time it wears down whoever is pressuring you.
2. The epileptic portrait
Possible repressed side: sudden anger, irritability and impulsive outbursts. Szondi linked this category to explosive emotion, a link modern neurology does not support as a description of people with epilepsy.
How it may show: you come across as calm, steady and dependable. You form lasting attachments to people, ideas and even objects, and others see you as unusually self-controlled.
3. The catatonic portrait
Possible repressed side: an overactive imagination and a streak of stubborn refusal, which Szondi felt could pull a person away from reality if left unchecked.
How it may show: you prefer routine, distrust sudden change and may feel shy in new situations. Losing control is your deepest worry, so you stick closely to the rules you have set yourself.
4. The schizophrenic (paranoid) portrait
Possible repressed side: emotional coldness and a wish to withdraw from people and events. Szondi's own category here was "paranoid"; many online versions simply say schizophrenic.
How it may show: you are outgoing and enjoy company, yet part of you feels alone even in a crowd. Some relationships may feel more polite than close, and deep down you may doubt that you really need anyone.
5. The hysteric portrait
Possible repressed side: a strong hunger for attention and approval. "Hysteria" is an outdated label that modern psychiatry has dropped.
How it may show: you seem modest and reserved, but you care a great deal about how you come across. Your clothes and details are carefully chosen. Sublimated, this drive often shows up as an unusual career or an eye-catching hobby.
6. The depressive portrait
Possible repressed side: low self-worth, guilt and a sense of not being good enough, held under control.
How it may show: people know you as cheerful, energetic and confident, the classic "sad clown". Low moods or suspicion can still slip through. Sublimated, the drive turns you into the friend everyone calls with their problems.
7. The manic portrait
Possible repressed side: restless excitement, big self-belief and a pull towards spending money and emotion freely.
How it may show: you dislike noise, extremes and showing off. You are measured, careful with money and logical, someone who keeps a firm hand on the brakes.
8. The eighth portrait
Some versions of this quiz call this portrait "dissociative identity disorder", but that does not match Szondi's scheme or the meaning of that diagnosis. In his set, the remaining category is h, which he labelled homosexual and tied to questions of gender role.
Traditional reading: rejecting this face was taken as a sign of early, unsettled questions about gender identity. The "denial" version was someone who strongly performs a traditional role, the very masculine man or the very feminine woman. Today this reading is best seen as a product of its era's assumptions about sexuality and gender.
Does the Szondi test work? What research found
The test became popular in Europe and the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s, largely through Susan Deri's English-language manual. Researchers then put it to the test, and the results were poor:
- Lubin and Malloy (1951) found that patients reacted inconsistently to photos meant to represent the same factor.
- Fosberg (1951) ran four experiments that did not support the theory behind the test.
- David and Rabinowitz (1952) found the signs for groups such as epileptic patients weak and advised against routine clinical use.
- Borstelmann and Klopfer (1953) concluded that the interpretations rested on tenuous ground and that validity was undetermined.
- Gordon (1953) found that people's choices tracked ordinary factors such as age, sex, mood and how conventional a face looked.
In 2006 a panel of psychologists surveyed by Norcross, Koocher and Garofalo rated the test "probably discredited" for personality assessment. It survives mainly in some European fate-analysis circles and as an internet quiz.
Common myths and a sensible way to use it
Myth: the faces reveal your "deepest hidden self". Your reaction to an old black-and-white photograph mostly reflects lighting, expression, age and the stereotypes you have absorbed, as Gordon's analysis suggested.
Myth: choosing a face means you share that person's condition. Even Szondi did not claim this, and modern research gives no support to reading illness from photo preferences.
Myth: it is a clinical tool. Psychologists today rely on tested questionnaires and structured interviews with known reliability.
Used light-heartedly, the test can still spark an interesting question: what is it about a stranger's face that unsettles me? If you notice persistent worries about your mood or identity, a doctor or licensed therapist is the right person to talk to, not a picture quiz.
Sources: Wikipedia: Szondi test · Wikipedia: Leopold Szondi · Quiz format and portrait set via Learning Mind (Anna LeMind, 2014)
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