On December 5 2025, Raluca Soreanu will deliver the Memorial Lecture in Bristol, as part of the Balint Society UK’s Bristol Study Day
In this talk, Raluca Soreanu explores Michael Balint’s vocabulary on transference and the position of the psychoanalyst. She looks at how thinkers of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis, especially Sándor Ferenczi, conceive of transference, the possibility of mutuality in the psychoanalytic dyad, the invisible power structure of the psychoanalytic dispositif, the elasticity of psychoanalytic technique, the plasticity of the position of the analyst, and the therapeutic value of phenomena of regression in the psychoanalytic frame. Michael Balint distinguishes himself through a ‘substance-centred’ view on the position of the analyst, which includes the famous formulation ‘the drug doctor’, but it is prefigured by earlier insights on substances and plasticity, which Raluca Soreanu will discuss.
December 5 2025, 5:45pm – 7pm
Engineers House, The Promenade, Clifton Down, Bristol BS8 3NB
