This article reconstructs Alice Bálint's personal and professional development, dilemmas and attachments, relying on her recently revealed diaries kept between 1917 and 1929. They are an especially interesting document in many respects, touching upon politics, love, womanhood and profession. The year 1923 consists of her entries during her analysis with Ferenczi, dissecting the tensions in her most significant ‘object relations’ — her analyst, her husband and her mother. These notes demonstrate how her conflicts with sexuality, motherhood and profession relate to her attitude to the analysis and Ferenczi himself. The more general ‘yield’ of the diaries is to provide a valuable insight into the social and political circumstances of early twentieth-century Hungary and its opportunities and limitations for a (middle-class, Jewish) woman with diverse talents and intellectual ambitions.