Before I was I

For Enid Balint, the practice of analysis can be compared with the process of learning a language. "The analyst who can do this," she says, "will continue to learn with every patient who comes to him throughout his professional life.".

Enid Balint has been a training analyst of the British Psycho-Analytical Society since the 1960s. She founded the Institute of Marital Studies at the Tavistock Clinic in London, and with her husband, Michael Balint, developed the training method for doctors known as the "Balint group." She is a highly original and creative psychoanalyst whose work is related to that of Sandor Ferenczi, Michael Balint, John Rickman, Wilfred Bion, and Donald Winnicott. This important new book traces the evolution of her professional identity and gives the reader a wealth of insight into both the theory and technique of psychoanalysis.

Balint shows a primary concern with the nature of analytic listening. She focuses on the understanding of pre-verbal and bodily processes, and the interface of the pre-verbal and verbal. Her central concept is that of "imaginative perception," without which, she claims, the world around us cannot be seen and felt as alive. She also elucidates a special type of "open communication" for analytic listening, and shows how technique can be a way of continual learning rather than acquiring specific skills and mechanisms. She emphasizes participant observation and the crucial importance of mutual concern.