Fernand Lechat, a Belgian industrial psychologist with the Center for Applied Psychology and a psychoanalyst, was born at Mont-sur-Marchienne in 1895 and died in Brussels in 1959. He and Maurice Dugautiez were among the first to promote psychoanalysis in Belgium. His religious, middle-class family wanted him to become a priest.

During World War I he enrolled in the air force as a volunteer. After the war he divided his energies between a prosperous insurance business and poetry. During this time he became a fervent believer in depth psychology and devised a personality test based on color selection. His first wife died. Then, following a difficult mourning period, he met a young teacher who became his second wife. She worked alongside him and encouraged him through all their years together.

After meeting with Maurice Dugautiez in 1933, he burned all his poetry and turned his back on his growing insurance business to devote...