ABSTRACT
Alice Bálint (1898–1939) was the daughter of Vilma Kovács, one of the first female analysts in Hungary. During her short life she carried out a wide range of theoretical, therapeutic and educational activities. In addition to psychoanalysis, she was engaged in the equally new sciences of ethnology and cultural anthropology, which she also incorporated successfully into her analytic thought. Along with her husband, Michael Bálint, she considered the mother–infant relationship a “primary object-love”, which made her one of the forerunners of the object relations theory. Following their marriage in 1921, the couple moved to Berlin to undergo their professional training and also to escape the antisemitic atmosphere prevalent in Hungary at this time. In 1924 they returned to Budapest and finished their analysis with Sándor Ferenczi. Alice Bálint became an active member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society from 1926. Her book, A gyermekszoba pszichológiája (The psychology of the nursery, 1931), was translated into several languages. Her educational and consulting activity was also remarkable; in her answers to parents’ questions she wrote about various taboo issues (such as onanism and sex education). In 1939 the deteriorating political situation forced the couple to emigrate from Hungary and they managed to find refuge in Manchester. Only a few months after immigration, Alice Bálint died of a ruptured aneurysm, at the age of just 41.
