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To embark on a biography is a curious undertaking. Apart from the documentary research, burrowing in archives, cross-examining witnesses, in short, the historian's work, there is an aspect no biographer can avoid—a sort of identification. This explains major differences between one text and another about the same person.
Michelle Moreau Ricaud's biography of Balint had been projected for several years; her articles and papers on the Budapest school had already whetted our appetite. This book is a synthesis of her research, for it offers the reader a sense both of Balint's character and of the phenomenon which developed around the groups named after him. But this was no simple task despite appearances (significant archives, the formation of groups etc.) since Balint was an enigmatic character. Michelle Moreau Ricaud invites us to participate in what is often a work of detection as she tracks down this original psychoanalyst. The biographical writing adopts novelistic turns of phrase with first person tonalities which indicate the author's affection for her hero.
The author's theoretical bias is obvious, but in no way does that affect the objectivity of the enterprise. Thus she takes a stand on essential questions of historical method (the question of school, for example) but, at the same time, she presents the reader with all the information before opting for the hypothesis which she considers pertinent. The subject of the school remains open, notwithstanding the resolution which Michelle Moreau Ricaud proposes. What is certain is that one has to examine it from the viewpoint of the relationship between psychoanalytic institutes and university courses, to which both Balint and Ferenczi contributed, as well as to focus on the question of the more or less conscious desire to be a master, a leader. As far as Balint is concerned this desire appears to be clearly identified, insofar as the author's research reveals the problem of filiation marked by paternal