Irányzatok és kutatások
a mai magyar pszichoanalízisben.
[A] Magyar Pszichoanalitikus Egyesület
1994. évi konferenciája.
(Research Trends in Hungarian Psychoanalysis
Today.
The 1994 Conference of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical
Association)
Edited by Dr. Dénes Lukács
Published and distributed by the Animula
Society,
Budapest, 1995, 237 pp.
[...]
The volume - to quote György Vikár again - is "comprehensive but heterogeneous" (p. 6). Thematically, conceptually and stylistically, the texts are so varied, and deal with so many different topics from temporal lobe epilepsy, computer-induced psychosis, babies, female sexuality, and the poetry of Dezsõ Kosztolányi to the Holocaust, the history of ideas, Gyula Horn and Don Juan, that one is tempted to suppose that psychoanalysts know about everything. Actually, after decades of being muzzled, Hungarian psychoanalysts simply want to prove that "the usefulness of psychoanalytic thinking is not restricted to a narrow and esoteric field, but can offer insights that are seminal for the different branches of medicine as well as for other areas of intellectual life" (p. 6.). Unfortunately, this "seminality" is not always evident. The studies in the volume vary from the excellent to the mediocre and even the pathetic; the volume, thus, has its high points but also its low points, which is rather disheartening.
[...]
[...] The volume contains two other studies that criticize the classical, patriarchal, Freudian view of femininity from the standpoint of modern, if not post-modern psychoanalysis. In his excellent article "Ferenczi a nõi szexualitásról" (Ferenczi on Female Sexuality, pp. 41-51), Rudolf Pfitzner, a Hungarian analyst living in Germany, looks at the work of Sándor Ferenczi, and - primarily on the basis of his later writings - presents him as the precursor and pioneer of the modern approach to female sexuality. The approach itself is explained in great detail in Júlia Szilágyi's "Rövid összefoglaló összehasonlítás a nõi pszichoszexuális fejlõdés kérdésében" (A Comparative Synopsis of the Theories of Female Psychosexual Development, pp. 228-36). One of the unqualified merits of the volume is the attention these studies draw to some of the salient issues of "feminist psychoanalysis".
The volume also addresses, though somewhat less explicitly, the problem of the place assigned to psychoanalysis by the philosophy of science, an issue that has only recently begun to occupy Hungarian psychologists. One of the best studies in the volume is György Gergely's "Az affektív tükrözés szerepe a projectív identifikáció és a hamis self kialakulásában" (The Role of Affective Mirroring in the Development of Projective Identification and the False Self, pp. 222-27), which suggests a possible synthesis of "cognitive science" based on cognitive psychology, and infantile developmental psychology.[...]
[...]
Judit B. Gáspár's "A sors mint neurózis: Tengelyi László A bûn mint sorsesemény cimû mûvének pszichoanalitikus tanulságairól" (Destiny as Neurosis: The Lessons Psychoanalysis Can Draw from László Tengelyi's Guilt as Destiny, pp. 163-73) is the finest piece of writing in the volume. As opposed to the "scientist" efforts to return to "hard" concepts and data, and put psychoanalysis back in the mainstream of "normal" science, Judit B. Gáspár suggests that psychoanalysts try the hermeneutic approach, and learn to think in terms of Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity. "Even emotionally speaking", she reminds her colleagues, "it is an anachronism today to lock ourselves up in some intellectual ghetto, some reservation, and isolate ourselves from the influence of the other human sciences, particularly philosophy" (p. 164). The philosophical and hermeneutical turn recommended by Judit B. Gáspár - following Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Tengelyi - may not be the only way for psychoanalysis to override the reductive and epistemologically naive approach that she so forcefully condemns, but it is a challenge that neither traditional psychoanalysis, nor "scientism" can afford to leave unanswered.
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[...] János Harmatta in his "Budapest-Berlin: pszichoanalízis a 20-as években" (Budapest-Berlin: Psychoanalysis in the '20s, pp. 74-83) compares the activities of the Budapest School and the Berlin institute for psychoanalytic training, and draws attention to a number of little-known connections between them. We learn from the study that the "Budapest-Berlin axis" was almost as important in those years as the "Budapest-Vienna axis".
There are no bipolar axes today, but all the more important are the international developments and international contacts that are the context of any scientific endeavor. It is this context that Gábor Szõnyi, the current president of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Association, examines in his opening essay: "A magyar pszichoanalízis helyzete és az európai pszichoanalízis" (The Position of Hungarian Psychoanalysis in European Psychoanalysis, pp. 7-16). In this, what we can call a bit of contemporary history, Szõnyi looks at the "realignment" Hungarian psychoanalysis has had to go through, the hardships it has encountered, and the results it has achieved in the process of catching up with psychoanalysis in Europe and around the world. One of the positive features of this paper is that it is not a martyrology. We know all about how analysts (too) were persecuted in the years of Fascism, and how the Rákosi régime abolished the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Association; what we know little about is how Hungarian psychoanalysis managed to survive under such circumstances. The way Szõnyi explains it, private medical practice in Hungary was never banned, thus the legal framework for doing psychoanalysis was given; the group of Hungarian analysts was large enough to cope with the losses, and, after a shorter or longer interlude, to pick up their practice again; the professional and other intellectual circles have always had a positive attitude toward analysis; certain "core groups" came into being in the '60s; the "psycho-boom" of the '70s touched Hungary, too, and helped popularize analysis; and lastly, the movement's supporters abroad could count on the practising analysts. Thus, when the Association was, again, fully legalized in the '80s, it did not have to start from scratch.
[...]