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Who are the women of tomorrow in the psychoanalytic landscape, and what is their contribution to the development of psychoanalysis?1 What are the effects of sociopolitical histories on articulating and comprehending the contributions made by women psychoanalysts? In Women in the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis: Girls of Tomorrow, Anna Borgos frames her argument at the productive intersection of these questions. In her book, women were not just passive ‘objects’ of treatment but were active participants who played a crucial role in shaping psychoanalysis since the beginning of the twentieth century. The book embraces the expression ‘girls of tomorrow’, which was coined by Lilly Hajdu, a significant Hungarian analyst, to describe the social dimension of gender issues, in which ‘psychoanalysis and politics … form[ed] an occasionally productive, but mostly controversial or even hostile relationship’ (p. 27). Borgos guides us through nine chapters detailing the growth and challenges of psychoanalysis in Hungary from the viewpoint of the first generation's female psychoanalysts. Her findings are based on a delicate mix of archival research and interview material, incorporating personal lives, clinical and academic connections with a critical consideration of femininity, gender, Jewish histories and politics.
Our starting point is a sketch of the Budapest School and the psychoanalytic landscape in Hungary. The Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association was formed in 1913 by Sándor Ferenczi, István Hollós, Sándor Radó, Lajos Lévy and Ignotus. Ferenczi influenced the theoretical orientation of the Budapest School, which developed in the direction of intersubjective relations, trauma, psychosis and countertransference, alongside an interdisciplinary openness to literature, art, politics, pedagogy and social sciences such as ethnology and sociology (p. 2). This was a fertile and open period for the ‘new science of psychoanalysis’ in which contemporary medicine, cultural forms and o