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Hungary, a country that was primarily agricultural until the mid-nineteenth century, entered the modern era in 1867 with the creation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. At the start of the twentieth century, in Budapest, which had become a center of cultural life, a group of radical intellectuals demanded the democratization of a country that had remained semi-feudal. Unable to compete in the political sphere, they created institutions like the Free School of Social Science, reviews like Huszadik Szàzad (Twentieth Century) and Nyugat (Occident), to achieve their goal by means of education. For psychoanalysis the Hungarian intelligentsia was fertile terrain, for it held that the liberation of the individual and the liberation of society went hand in hand.

Psychoanalysis was introduced to Hungary by Sándor Ferenczi, who was its leading exponent. A young neurologist, Ferenczi encountered Freudian theory through Carl Gustav Jung's word association test and through the literature of analysis. After his first visit to Freud in February 1908, he quickly became an integral part of the Vienna group and assumed the responsibility of bringing psychoanalysis to Hungary. His efforts were well received in literary and artistic circles, as shown in the writings of Géza Csáth, Dezsö Kosztolànyi, Mihály Babits, and Frigyes Karinthy, while most physicians remained reticent.

The Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association was founded by Ferenczi in 1913. In addition to Ferenczi, its members included the psychiatrist István Hollós, the physician Lajos Lévy, the medical student Sándor Radó, and the journalist and writer Hugó Ignotus (Hugó Veigelsberg), the editor-in-chief of Nyugat.

During World War I, Ferenczi, who had been mobilized, cared for soldiers who had suffered trauma during combat. The psychoanalytic treatment of war neuroses drew the attention of Hungarian officials, with the result that the Fifth Congress of Psychoanalysis, organized in Budapest on September 28 and 29, 1918, was held at the Academy of Sciences in the presence of government representatives. During the congress, Antal (Anton) von Freund, who ran a large beer hall, but also had a PhD in philosophy, a patient and friend of Freud, provided funding for the creation of a psychoanalytic clinic and publishing house. Ferenczi was elected president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, but the political upheavals that shook the country, especially Hungary's independence from Austria, the democratic revolution, the Bolshevik revolution in Budapest in 1919 and its brutal repression, forced him to yield the presidency to the Briton, Ernest Jones.

During the democratic government of Mihály Károlyi, students and progressives demanded that psychoanalysis be officially recognized. Their demand reached the Commune and Ferenczi was appointed professor of psychoanalysis at the university, the first in the world. When the right-wing government of Miklós Horthy came to power, the position was eliminated and, in 1920, Ferenczi was excluded from the Hungarian medical association.

The 1920s turned out to be a phase of expansion for psychoanalysis in Hungary. At the end of the war, Géza Róheim, Imre Hermann, Zsigmond Pfeifer, and other leading figures joined the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association. Cut off from playing a role in Hungarian public life, psychoanalysts consulted, taught, and published. Róheim developed the notion of psychoanalytic anthropology, Hermann worked on the psychology of creativity, Pfeifer on children's games. This was also the period of the first wave of emigration. Sándor Radó and Jenö Hárnik moved to Berlin and participated in the creation of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training. During the twenties, József Eisler, Sándor Feldmann, Erzsébet Révész, Béla Felszeghy, Vilma Kovács, and Alice and Mihály Bálint joined the association.

Efforts were made to organize the teaching of psychoanalysis. Seminars on theory were established in 1919, and in 1925 a training method specific to Hungary was developed by Ferenczi and Vilma Kovács.

In 1925, István Hollós was fired from his position as head physician at the psychiatric hospital of Lipótmezö because of his Jewish background. Two years later he published My Farewell from the Yellow House, in which he investigated psychosis from a new and innovative point of view.

In 1928, Géza Róheim traveled to central Australia, Normanby Island, and America. During his research, financed by Marie Bonaparte, he combined anthropological research with psychoanalytic theory.

In 1930, a psychoanalytic clinic for children was created under the direction of Margit Dubowitz. That same year Lilian Rotter and Fanny Hann joined the association. In 1931, in spite of several administrative problems, a polyclinic was opened at 12 Mészáros Street, with Ferenczi as director. The building and funding were provided by Vilma Kovács and her family; analysts from the association provided free consultations.

Ferenczi's students prepared Psychoanalytic Studies for his sixtieth birthday, but the book wasn't published until after his death in 1933. István Hollós then became president of the association and Mihály Bálint director of the polyclinic.

In 1935 and 1937 two meetings, known as the Four Nations, were organized by the psychoanalytic associations of Vienna, Prague, Italy, and Hungary, the first in Vienna, the second in Budapest, and devoted to the problems of psychoanalytic training. At the second meeting, Vilma Kovács detailed the characteristics of the Hungarian method and Anna Freud read a paper by Helene Deutsch criticizing the method.

Hungarian analysts also began a program to develop public awareness of psychoanalysis. Kata Lévy organized seminars with teachers, Alice Bálint with mothers, and Mihály Bálint held discussion groups with general practitioners. In 1933, Lilly Hajdu, a psychiatrist, joined the association.

During the late thirties, threatened by the rise of anti-Semitism and fascism, a number of analysts decided to emigrate. Among them were the Bálints, Géza Róheim, Sándor Feldmann, and Edit Gyömröi. The association continued to function under police surveillance and under the direction of its non-Jewish members, Endre Almássy and Tibor Rajka. In 1944, when German troops invaded Hungary and put Hungarian Nazis in power, several analysts, including Zsigmond Pfeifer, Géza Dukes, László Révész, Miklós Gimes, and József Eisler, became victims of persecution. Imre Hermann and István Hollós barely escaped with their lives.

After 1945, psychoanalysts in Hungary resumed their activities. They participated in the creation of a mental health institute and worked in dispensaries. But the Stalinist government, which came to power in 1948, forced the association to dissolve. From then on psychoanalysis survived in a semi-clandestine fashion, primarily through the help of Imre Hermann, who trained the new generation of analysts: György Vikár, Livia Nemes, Agnes Binét, Teréz Virág. The dark years after 1956 were marked by the suicide of Lilly Hajdu, whose husband was murdered by the Nazis and whose son, a friend of Imre Nagy, had been executed along with the prime minister. During the sixties, the Kádar government became more tolerant of psychoanalysis. István Székács, a member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association since 1939, also began to train psychoanalysts, although not initially a member of Hermann's group.

During the seventies, Hungarian analysts still did not have an officially recognized association, but some public manifestations of recognition took place. In 1969, for example, Imre Hermann was decorated on his eightieth birthday and, in 1974, a commemorative celebration was organized for the Ferenczi centenary. In 1987 an international congress of psychoanalysis was held in Budapest.

After democracy was restored in 1989, the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association was reconstituted and affiliated itself with the International Psychoanalytic Association. A new generation of analysts was able to practice, teach, and publish openly.

The Ferenczi Society, a broad-based group of people interested in psychoanalysis, began to publish the review Thalassa. While the first generation of analysts trained by Imre Hermann was affected primarily by his ideas, contemporary psychoanalysts were reevaluating the ideas of Ferenczi, which they were forced to read in foreign editions since his complete works had not yet been published in Hungarian because of a lack of funding. They also served as an inspiration for Otto Kernberg.

Hungarian psychoanalysts of the 1930s developed a number of specific ideas that justify referring to them collectively as the Budapest School. These include the importance of trauma in the etiology of mental pathology, the attention given to object relations, consideration of dyadic relations and regression, and insistence on the importance of experience in therapy. Hungarian training methods differed from other methods in that the candidate's first control analysis was undertaken by his own analyst to further an understanding of the counter-transference and better understand his own transference to the analyst.

Ferenczi's students demonstrated considerable creativity. Imre Hermann developed the theory of clinging, Géza Róheim the ontogenetic theory of culture, and Mihály Bálint the theory of primal love (and several others after his emigration). Lilian Rotter developed a body of original work on female sexuality and Alice Bálint on the mother-child relationship. István Hollós and Lilly Hajdu examined psychoses from a psychoanalytic point of view.

ÉVA BRABANT-GERÖ