Max Lüscher

Max Lüscher (born 9 September 1923, Basel, Switzerland) is a Swiss psychotherapist. He's known for inventing the Lüscher color test, a tool for measuring the person's psychophysical state based on his or her color preferences. Besides research, teaching and practicing psychotherapy in Basel, Lüscher worked for international companies, amongst other things giving color advice. His book "The Lüscher Test" has been translated into more than 30 languages.

Max Lüscher was born in Basel, Switzerland on September 9th, 1923. After receiving his Swiss "Matura", comparable to a diploma, he focused on studying psychiatry and achieved his doctorate in the areas of philosophy, psychology, and the philosophy of law. Lüscher completed his dissertation on "Color as an aid in psychological diagnosis". This project was chosen as the summa cum laude by his professors. After this, working as a psychotherapist, Lüscher created his first color test which was published in 1947. This test used color cards to determine the current emotional state of the test-taker. From 1961 to 1965, Lüscher lived in Berlin and continued his career as a psychotherpaist. Now, he is living in Lucerne, Switzerland as head of the "Institute for Medical Psychological Diagnosis". Lüscher is widely notorious for his guest lectures and training seminars for physicians. Today, the "Lüscher-Color-Diagnostics" are used in many different universities across the globe.

The test colors from the Lüscher Color-Diagnosis chosen based on favoritism. The test-taker chooses the card color they like best and then orders the rest from most-preferred to lease-preferred. Numbers are printed on the backside of each card, and after the test-taker orders them, the examiner turns them over and references an accompanying book that contains all of the different number combinations and their meaning. Lüscher argues that the subject's choice of color shows the state of their psychosomatic and emotional status and how they feel about themselves. Many studies that have used the Lüscher Color Test have reported similar findings, which have given it more validation as a means to assess personalities.

Lüscher relates to his four fundamental colors to the following fundamental categories:

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