ABSTRACT
The life story of Lilly Hajdu (1891–1960) is a particularly tragic example of the 20th-century intertwining of politics and the history of psychoanalysis and the impact which this had on people’s personal and professional lives. Hajdu graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Budapest, as one of its first female students (calling herself a “girl of tomorrow” – hence the title of the book). Her therapeutic and theoretical work focused on the psychoanalytic therapy of schizophrenia. Her emphasis on the active technique, the language of tenderness and intersubjectivity strongly reflects Ferenczi’s influence. She served as president of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Association from 1947 until its forced dissolution in 1949. Then, in the 1950s, she became director of the Hungarian Institute of Neurology and Mental Disorders, a period when she had to “freeze” her psychoanalytic identity. The revolution of 1956 also marked a further turning point in her life. Her son, Miklós Gimes Jr., was executed in 1958 as a result of the Imre Nagy trial. Her daughter migrated to Switzerland in 1956. When her passport request was refused for the third time, she committed suicide in 1960.
