Coercion and Freedom in the Fate of the Individual
1991

Art is Illness also has to do with my study of the history of psychiatry. Cesare Lomboroso examined the physiognomy of criminals and suggested dividing them into psychological types based on their appearance. Leopold Szondi, a pupil of Sigmund Freud established 1956 a theory he called “Genotropism” which acknowledges the deterministic influences of genetics and familial legacy, it also emphasizes human agency—the capacity to make conscious choices and transcend inherited tendencies. Szondi examined patients in psychiatric clinics and photographed their faces. In his book “Coercion and Freedom in the Fate of the Individual,” he proposed a test procedure based on these photographs. This projective personality test involves selecting photographs of individuals with visible psychiatric diagnoses. Participants’ choices are believed to reveal unconscious preferences or aversions linked to inherited traits or drives. The test subject was given 48 cards with portraits of psychiatric patients: schizophrenics, manics, depressives, epilectics but also homosexuals. The test subject divided them into two groups: sympathetic and unsympathetic. The “sympathetic” group was supposed to reflect the psyche of the test subject and give insight on his personality structure. The test lasted until the 1990s, although the assumptions were refuted both theoretically and empirically.

I was fascinated by the expressions on these faces in this outdated test, but also by the medical misuse of the portrait—the perhaps most “sacred” artistic format. The face, the mirror of the soul, was used in physiognomy and later in racial theories to evaluate people and determine their fates.

In 1990 I had a selection of 16 faces printed in poster form. This was my own Lomboroso test – my psychological profile and used it for installations. We carried out a large-scale poster campaign as part of an exhibition called “U Recickych” and put up over 3,000 posters all over the city. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was still little advertising in public spaces in Prague. Our posters had no writing, no indication of what they were for. The media reported that they might be Moravian politicians, until someone from the Szondi Institute revealed the origin of the images. I was then attacked as a “psychological terrorist”. I had thwarted any further use of the Szondi test, as everyone now knows the faces. It was the first artistic poster campaign in Prague.