In These Pages…

This second volume of the three special Balint issues planned by the American journal of Psychoanalysis includes two parts: the first part deals with Michael Balint's “training cum research” work with general practicioners; the second concerns more closely Michael Balint's personality and is illustrated by some pictures.

Michael Balint's rather—with whom he always had a difficult relationship—was a general practitioner, so Balint had plenty of reasons to be especially interested in the relationship a general practicioner would be able to create with his patients (or children). He first attempted to approach this problem in the early 1920s at the Berlin hospital where he worked in the section of Professor Warburg. At that time, he already knew Sándor Ferenczi, who also was interested in the question of the doctor-patient relationship. We can assume that Balint read Ferenczi's paper, “Psychanalysis in the service of the general practicioner” published in 1923. Once back in Hungary, Balint published in 1930 his paper “The crisis of the medical practice” (included in our first Balint issue) for the first time in English. One can find in this still very modern writing the roots of the work he elaborated later in England during the 1950s and that constitutes the basis of his two famous books, The Doctor, his Patient and the Illness, and Psychtherapeutic Techniques in Medicine.

This was a quite revolutionary approach, which met with considerable interest all around the world. John Salinsky describes the history of the evolution of the Balint movement. Little by little, the Balint method was adopted (and adapted) not only in the medical field but also in other professional fields. Psychologists, social workers, lawyers, teachers, and clergymen organized Balint groups in order to be able to work in a more efficient and more interesting way. This was an important point for Balint. He wanted to help people to become better professionals in their own field—medicine as far as he w