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In this book, Balint's contributions to psychoanalytic theory and applied psychoanalysis are outlined, examined, and put into an historical context in a way that is admirable for its clarity and condensation. While Balint was one of a group of psychoanalysts who “developed and advanced what is known as the British object relations school of psychoanalysis” (Preface), and while many of his views have been incorporated into psychoanalytic thinking, they have perhaps not received the recognition they deserve. If not entirely overtly stated, it seems unquestionable that a main aim of the book is to try to reestablish Balint as a prominent psychoanalytic thinker.
The first, and main, portion of the book is devoted to Balint's theories on psychoanalysis; the second comprising chapters by Andrew Elder and Robert Gosling, to Balint's contributions to applied work in the realm of general practice. In the first section, Balint's published work is discussed chronologically, enabling the reader to get a sense of the development of his ideas. At the same time, there are a number of ideas that Balint did not develop fully, notably his view that there are separate lines of development for instinctual drives and object relations, and his theories do not form an integrated whole. Stewart suggests that these factors may contribute to Balint's receiving insufficient recognition, as may the relative lack of clinical examples to support and explicate his ideas on theory and technique. It is nevertheless clear that Balint was an enormously creative, courageous, and pioneering thinker and practitioner. My experience in reading the book, as one who has only dabbled in his work, was both of learning something new and of recognising Balint as the source, or one of the sources, of ideas previously known.
Balint was, for example, among the first group of analysts, following Ferenczi, firmly committed to the concept of the primacy of object relations, beginning with the infant's primary state of