Chapter 9 GP Training and Psychoanalysis

What has this work with GPs to do with psychoanalysis? Certainly it is hard to believe that the approach would have been worked out except by someone experienced in psychoanalysis and deeply committed to its method and values. Doubtless, others can now get a firm grip on the technique and so can function as effective leaders of seminars. Indeed, the majority of such seminars in the United Kingdom are now led by experienced GPs who have taken part in this kind of work and not by psychoanalysts at all, though the extent to which they have moved away from the original ‘Balint Method’ is not known. But to make such a break with the long-standing tradition of postgraduate professional training, to eschew any ordinary kind of ‘teaching’, and to have carried the project through despite initial opposition from the members of the group and scepticism from psychoanalytic colleagues must have required a faith in the approach that could only have been acquired from a personal experience in another setting. Whether or not, however, this task could have been carried through by someone with a different background, we can nevertheless profitably scrutinize Balint’s work from the point of view of psychoanalysis.

The salient characteristic of the Balint Method is that it is an exploration—an exploration of how things are between a certain GP and a certain patient at a certain time, and of the factors that have played a part in bringing this state of affairs about. This approach is epitomized in the title he gave to the project from its beginnings, namely, Research-cum-Training. In so far as any teaching crept in it did so adventitiously and almost despite his best efforts. When the demand for psychological theory became clamorous he arranged some didactic sessions at another time.

It was, however, a training as well as research and so presumably the GPs learned some skill that they did not have before. What they learned was an approach, a new way of looking at what had been in front of