This fascinating collection explores the life of renowned theorist Michael Balint in his native Budapest. With a Balint revival in mind, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years brings together the work of psychoanalysts, social thinkers, historians, literary scholars, artists and medical doctors who draw on Balint’s work in a variety of ways. The book focuses on Balint’s early years in Budapest, where he worked with Sándor Ferenczi and a circle of colleagues, capturing the transformations of psychoanalytic thinking as it happens in a network of living relationships. Tracing creative disagreements as well as collaborations, and setting these exchanges in the climate of scientific, social and cultural developments of the time, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years follows the development of psychoanalytic thinking during these critical times.The book recalls the story of several ‘lost children’ of the Budapest School and reconstitutes Balint’s important early contributions on primary love. It also examines his little-known relationship with Lacan, including the extended discussion of Balint’s work by Wladimir Granoff in Lacan’s first public seminar in Paris in 1954, published here for the first time. This important book provides a fresh perspective on Balint’s enormous contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and will interest both scholars and clinicians. It will also inspire those interested in clinical practice and the applications of psychoanalysis to the cultural sphere.

This fascinating collection explores the life of renowned theorist Michael Balint in his native Budapest. With a Balint revival in mind, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years brings together the work of psychoanalysts, social thinkers, historians, literary scholars, artists and medical doctors who draw on Balint’s work in a variety of ways. The book focuses on Balint’s early years in Budapest, where he worked with Sándor Ferenczi and a circle of colleagues, capturing the transformations of psychoanalytic thinking as it happens in a network of living relationships. Tracing creative disagreements as well as collaborations, and setting these exchanges in the climate of scientific, social and cultural developments of the time, Michael Balint and his World: The Budapest Years follows the development of psychoanalytic thinking during these critical times.The book recalls the story of several ‘lost children’ of the Budapest School and reconstitutes Balint’s important early contributions on primary love. It also examines his little-known relationship with Lacan, including the extended discussion of Balint’s work by Wladimir Granoff in Lacan’s first public seminar in Paris in 1954, published here for the first time. This important book provides a fresh perspective on Balint’s enormous contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and will interest both scholars and clinicians. It will also inspire those interested in clinical practice and the applications of psychoanalysis to the cultural sphere.

The Ferenczi-Jones correspondence presented here is an important document of the early history of psychoanalysis. It spans more than two decades, and addresses many of the relevant issues of the psychoanalytic movement between 1911-1933, such as Freud's relation to Stekel, Adler and Jung; the First World War, the debates of the 1920s regarding the theoretical and technical ideas of Rank and Ferenczi; problems of leadership, structure, and finding a center for the psychoanalytical movement; as well as issues related to telepathy and lay analysis. It includes thirty-seven letters and six postcards, as well as original documents waiting to be found for eight decades; these belong to the "private," personal history of psychoanalysis and help to decode diverse aspects of the experience preserved in these documentary memories of former generations. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this correspondence is how it allows us to build up a far more nuanced picture of the development of an extraordinary relationship between Ferenczi and Jones. It could hardly be termed harmonious, and was not devoid of rivalry and jealousy, sometimes even of hidden passion and outright hostility. Nevertheless, friendship, sympathy, collegiality and readiness for cooperation were just as important for Ferenczi and Jones as rivalry, mistrust and suspicion. This volume celebrates the 100th anniversary of the foundation in 1913 of both the British and the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Societies.

Ferenczi for Our Time stakes its greatest claim on the reader's attention by making manifest the contours of a distinctively Ferenczian tradition in the history of psychoanalysis, covering methodology, theory, and clinical practice in psychoanalysis.

This volume honours Sandor Ferenczi, a central character in the birth of psychoanalysis, whose warm and passionate personality, ideas, and teachings permeate his world and his work, shaping psychoanalytical thinking of generations.

The author's correspondence presented here is an important document of the early history of psychoanalysis. It spans more than two decades, and addresses many of the relevant issues of the psychoanalytic movement between 1911-1933, such as Freud's relation to Stekel, Adler and Jung; the First World War, the debates of the 1920s regarding the theoretical and technical ideas of Rank and Ferenczi; problems of leadership, structure, and finding a centre for the psychoanalytical movement; as well as issues related to telepathy and lay analysis. It includes thirty-seven letters and six postcards, as well as original documents waiting to be found for eight decades; these belong to the 'private', personal history of psychoanalysis and help to decode diverse aspects of the experience preserved in these documentary memories of former generations.

This volume honors Sandor Ferenczi, a central character in the birth of psychoanalysis, whose warm and passionate personality, ideas, and teachings permeate his world and his work, shaping psychoanalytical thinking of generations.

"Ferenczi for Our Time" presents contributions from British, French, American and Hungarian analysts of the second, third and even fourth generation, who deal with different dimensions of experiencing the external and internal world. These papers explore linkages between Ferenczi and the works of Winnicott, Klein, Alice, Michael and Enid Balint, the British Independents as well, as French analytical thought related to Dolto and beyond. The reader will also become acquainted with original documents of a revived Hungarian psychoanalytical world and new voices of Budapest. The Balints chapter invites the reader to listen to colleagues sharing memories, recollections and images--allowing a personal glimpse into the life and professional-human environment of these extraordinary personalities.The topics discussed here are wide ranging: possibilities and impossibilities of elaborating social and individual traumata, child analysis and development, body-and-mind and clinical aspects of working with psychosomatic diseases. Functions and dysfunctions of societal and individual memory are explored as signifying blinded spots in our vision of external and psychic reality as well as the vicissitudes of generational transmission of trauma. The scope of these papers covers methodology, theory and clinical practice."

The book contains reflections from Eva Almassy, Jacqueline Amati-Mehler, Pina Antinucci, Antal Bokay, Julia Borossa, John Clare, Ferenc Ero s, Susan Haxell,Eva Hoffman, Kathleen Kelley-Laine , Leon Kleimberg, W. Gordon Lawrence, Judit Me sza ros, Gershon J. Molad, George Pick, Rachel Rosenblum, Tamara Stajner-Popovic, Riccardo Steiner, Judit Szekacs-Weisz, Judith E. Vida, Shula Wilson, and Ali Zarbafi. Lost Childhood and the Language of Exile invites the reader to enter a territory which is not only multilingual but multidimensional: defined and shaped by history, politics, economy, and sociocultural transformations. The contributions give important insights on the psychodynamic processes involved in working with, and being part of, exiled and immigrant populations. The majority of the stories take as their base the upheaval caused by the Second World War but their stories are still, sadly, relevant today with the ongoing plight of refugees the world over. By presenting their experiences, the contributors provide a vital record of what it means to leave your homeland behind, to make a new life in a new land, and to live and work in a second tongue. The aim was, and is, to provide stimulus for further thinking and research. Two contributors, Ali Zarbafi and Shula Wilson, took up that challenge and we were delighted to publish their contribution to this debate in their edited work, Mother Tongue and Other Tongues: Narratives in Multilingual Psychotherapy (2021).