ABSTRACT
Balint's work on brief forms of psychotherapy is still relevant to the ongoing debate today on the subject of the status of psychotherapies. Although this work is little known, Balint took an interest very early in what he described as ‘psychotherapy for a larger segment of the population’. At the time of the very first training groups for doctors set up in England he set out to develop a specific form of psychotherapy for use by general practitioners, based on the knowledge acquired in psychoanalysis but without artificially imitating it. 1 He also defined the terms of psychotherapies to be conducted by non-analysts other than doctors, in particular social workers. Alongside the ‘focal therapy workshop’, he formalised the practice of ‘brief’ psychotherapies, to be conducted by psychoanalysts.
