You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Michelle Moreau Ricaud, Doctor of Clinical Psychology and psychoanalyst, is a specialist on the history of the Hungarian psychoanalytic movement. As a member of the Société Médicale Balint, she is very much involved in the life and development of the Balint groups for doctors both in France and abroad. Her published works include Cure d'ennui: Ecrivains Hongrois autour de Sandor Ferenczi (1992) and numerous articles in French, English and Spanish journals. She also contributed to Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis (Rudnytsky et al., 1996) and to Psychoanalysis International (Kutter, 1995). Her book provides a fresh and in-depth perspective on Balint's life and works.
Certain aspects of Balint's oeuvre have already been approached in other works by French authors. For instance, Andre Haynal's book, The Technique at Issue: Controversies in Psychoanalysis from Freud to Ferenczi to Michael Balint (1988) highlights the distinctive role of the “Hungarians” in the evolution of the international psychoanalytic movement. From the very first page, Moreau Ricaud's work demonstrates a scholarly touch and the rigor of a historian which affords the book its originality and quality. Her work cannot, however, be reduced to a simple “portrait of Michael Balint” as it includes a number of previously ignored biographic details, resulting from in-depth research with members of the Balint family and those people who spent time with him. It is a delight to follow, for example, the story of Mihály's (Balint's Hungarian first name) childhood in Pest and that of his studious youth, his meeting with his future wife, Alice Kovacs, and then his visits to Sandor Ferenczi, who was central to his future as a psychoanalytic researcher. We also learn about Balint's character traits, at long last recounted by those who were close to him.
The major aim of this book is to bring life to the historical course of the inventive thinking of Michael Balint. In the first chapter Moreau Ricaud places Balint in w