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In the late 1940s Michael Balint began a systematic exploration of the ways in which psychoanalytic knowledge could be used in the
therapy of more than the few privileged individuals able to afford a full analysis. Out of this grew the psychoanalytic approach to the marital couple, the training of general practitioners in psychodynamic understanding, the approach to women's sexual problems through a physical examination (in some ways anticipating Masters and Johnson), and the investigation of brief individual psychotherapy. To each of these fields Balint brought some basic simple ideas, in each he interacted with a team of specialists in a process of mutual teaching and discovery, and in each the result was an important contribution to therapeutic techniques.
In brief individual therapy his original ideas were as follows: that the most suitable patients would be those with mild illnesses of recent onset, that a therapeutic plan should be made after a diagnosis in depth, and that the therapist should try to work through a chosen limited area briefly, guiding the patient by selective attention and selective neglect. For this limited area he later introduced the word 'focus', calling the technique the 'focal' technique, and the method of therapy 'focal therapy'.
Where these ideas erred, they did so only through undue modesty rather than undue ambition. It was found that under the right conditions patients with quite severe and longstanding illnesses could be substantially helped. Moreover, the technique that best achieved this end in the ordinary neurotic patient was that which used to the full the basic psychoanalytic principles of transference interpretation and making the link with childhood. Therefore the aim of working through a limited area could in certain cases mean a brief working through of what appeared to be the patient's 'nuclear problem', e.g. the Oedipus complex in a man or a woman. Thus though the idea of sticking to a 'focus' was not contradict