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This book is a collection of papers published by the author from 1930 to 1952, together with one written by Alice Balint and one in collaboration with her. They represent a considerable part of the psycho-analytical work of Michael Balint, and are dominated by two themes: the development of individual sexuality and the development of human relations, both of which are in a way connected with the author's predilection for two of Freud's works. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Totem and Taboo. The author's approach to his problems is mainly but not exclusively clinical and technical: 'this meant studying the processes as they develop and change under the impact of the analytical situation in the patient, that is, studying the psycho-analyst's technique and the patient's responses to it' (p. 5). This explains the division of the book into two parts, 'Instincts and Object Relations' and 'Problems of Technique'. The two parts are linked together by the psychological relation between the technical concept of the 'New Beginning' and the theoretical concept of 'Primitive Object Love'.
The technical and clinical concept of 'New Beginning' was formulated by Balint in 1930 (pp. 36–41); it reappears in several of his theoretical and technical papers, and is presented in the most accomplished form in the last of these, 'The New Beginning and the Paranoid and the Depressive Syndromes' (1952) which was written on the occasion of Melanie Klein's seventieth birthday. Under this title Balint describes the phenomena which appear towards the end of the treatment: 'my patients began—very timidly at first—to desire, to expect, even to demand, certain simple gratifications, mainly, though not exclusively, from their analyst' (p. 245); the demands, as often as not, were for physical contact. These desires present two important characteristics: (1) they cannot be satisfied except by another human being; (2) the level of gratification does not go beyond that of a moderat