ABSTRACT
I played often with John and other children in the Balint home. I was impressed not only by his miniature train and ship models, but by the intellectual and artistic environment as well. When I learned that the parents were psychoanalysts, all my visual impressions were interspersed with this somewhat mysterious profession. As I realised later, when I studied psychoanalysis, their house at Mészáros Street 12 was famous. The house was owned by the Kovács family. Vilma Kovács, also an analysand of Ferenczi, was the mother of Alice Balint. It was in this building that the Psychoanalytic Institute and Clinic, directed first by Ferenczi and later by Balint, was subsequently housed. Perhaps these impressions contributed to my early decision to become a psychoanalyst.
