Primary Love and Psycho-Analytic Technique

Primary Love and Psycho-Analytic Technique collects papers Michael Balint wrote between 1930 and 1952, the earlier ones in Budapest under the influence of Sándor Ferenczi and the later ones in Britain, together with a paper by Alice Balint on the child's love for its mother and the mother's love for her child. The first part revises the psychoanalytic account of early development. Balint questions Freud's primary narcissism and the picture of libido unfolding through fixed pregenital organizations, and argues that the infant is related to objects from the start. Its earliest relation is a passive, archaic object love: the wish to be loved and gratified unconditionally, without effort or return, by an environment it takes for granted. Narcissism, autoerotism, sadism and hate then appear as secondary formations, consequences of and defences against the frustration of this primary love. The same view shapes his account of adult genital love, in which genital satisfaction is fused with pregenital tenderness and with regard for the partner as a person whose interests become one's own. The second part turns to technique. Balint treats the analytic situation as a relationship between two people, in which the analyst's behaviour and personality help shape the transference, and asks for a theory that takes both into account. Building on Ferenczi's technical experiments, he describes how, when regression in treatment reaches the level of primitive object relations, a patient may give up long-standing defensive attitudes and begin to love again in a less anxious and less suspicious way. He calls this phase the "new beginning" and regards it as the final goal of treatment and the mark of a completed analysis. Further papers deal with character analysis, ego strength and its education, transference and countertransference, the changing aims of analytic technique and the termination of analysis. The collection prepared Balint's later work on regression and the basic fault and is a principal statement of the Budapest school's contribution to object-relations theory.