This book shines a light on the social and professional factors on the life and work of the first women psychoanalysts in Budapest, examining documentary evidence of their lives and drawing upon the literature of psychoanalysis, social history, and gender studies. Through their life stories, not only the history of psychoanalysis, but also the processes of 20th-century women’s history and social-political developments in Hungary and the region can be reconstructed. Key psychoanalysts explored include Lilly Hajdu, Edit Gyömrői, Alice Bálint, Vilma Kovács, Lillián Rotter and twelve further women analysts.
Anna Borgos (PhD) is a psychologist and women’s historian, working as a research fellow in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology (Budapest) and as the editor in chief of the Hungarian psychoanalytic journal Imágó Budapest. Her main research interests are the career of intellectual women in the early 20th century and the history of sexuality. Her latest book, Women in the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis: Girls of Tomorrow was published at Routledge in 2021. With Ferenc Erős and Júlia Gyimesi she co-edited the volume Psychology and Politics: Intersections of Science and Ideology in the History of Psy-Sciences (CEU Press, 2019).
Saturday, February 3, 2024
5 pm UK time (GMT)
6 pm European time (CET)
Online via Zoom – 2 hours, register here.
Discussants: Endre Koritar and Raluca Soreanu
Moderator: Judit Székács-Weisz
Endre Koritar, M.D., FRCP(C), FIPA, is a training and supervising analyst with the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society Institute. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of the University of British Columbia affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry. He is on the Board of Directors of the ISFN, the National Council of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the National Training Committee, and an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is interested in researching and elaborating on the ideas of Sándor Ferenczi, who was a harbinger of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and technique.
Raluca Soreanu is Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and psychoanalyst, member of the Círculo Psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro. She is co- author, with Jakob Staberg and Jenny Willner, of Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe (Leuven University Press, 2023). Between 2022 and 2027, she is leading the interdisciplinary research project FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for Our Times (UKRI Frontier Research Grant). She is Academic Associate of the Freud Museum London, where she has taught courses on the work of Ferenczi.
Judit Szekacs-Weisz is a bilingual psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, a member of the British and the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society. Born and educated (mostly) in Budapest, she has absorbed the ideas and way of thinking of Ferenczi, the Balints, Hermann, and Rajka as integral parts of a “professional mother tongue”. She is author of several articles, and co-editor of Lost Childhood and the Language of Exile. Together with Tom Keve she co-edited Ferenczi and His World and Ferenczi for Our Time.
