Budapest School Research Articles

Book Review: Critical Theories and the Budapest School: Politics, Culture, and Modernity

Book Review: Critical Theories and the Budapest School: Politics, Culture, and Modernity

Book review essay: The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism

J.F. Dorahy's The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism (2019) offers contemporary readers a conscientious assessment of the intellectual initiatives of Ágnes Heller, György Márkus, and Ferenc Fehér, both in the years immediately following their apprenticeship with György Lukács, and later, through their independent philosophical endeavours. Dorahy's book also pinpoints the Budapest thinkers' proposal for a radical democratic reckoning, and begins to suggest how that proposal might today bear on global practice and globally-minded theories. The book is an excellent introduction to the ideas of Heller and Márkus. But through them, it is also a striking and thoroughly relevant consideration of the possibilities for an ethics of planetary commitment, and for a critical theory fixed upon incorporating the vigorous rootstock of radical democracy with a multidimensional, pluralistic social order.

WHERE PATHOLOGY, MICROBIOLOGY AND VIROLOGY CONVERGE: PROFESSOR VICTOR BABEȘ

"Providential personalities are an essential, unifying, element across cultures, omnipresent in the world’s history [1]. Professor Victor Babeș, a distinguished figure in pathology, microbiology and virology, attended high school in Budapest and pursued his higher medical education in Budapest and Wien. He lectures at the pathology department of the University of Budapest at only 18 years of age. In 1885, he co-authored the first Bacteriology Treaty in Paris alongside Cornil. In 1887, he went on to establish the pathology and bacteriology departments at the Faculty of Medicine, in Bucharest. He contributed to the medical world literature with over 1000 papers, written in different languages. Professor Victor Babeș studied bacteria, viruses, parasites and influenced preventive medicine. Overall, he discovered more than 50 new microbes. An entire book may be devoted just to his pathological discoveries (cancer, leprosy, tuberculosis, diphtheria, actinomycosis, anthrax, syphilis, plague, rabies, etc.). In 1912 he published (in Paris) a vast treaty on rabies; he dedicated 90 of his best works to rabies. Victor Babeș National Institute of Research and Development in Pathology and Biomedical Sciences has been founded on the 28th of April 1887 by Professor Victor Babeș. Initially constituted as a “Bacteriology and Pathology Institute”, it was able to comply with one of the most demanding medical needs of the time and it has contributed to finding realistic solutions regarding medical organization. In terms of importance and activity, the institute represented a prefiguration of the future Ministry of Health [2]. Professor Babeș's life should be remembered for his works that marked the opening of new horizons and for a personality whose genius echoes to this day. "

Students’ attitudes toward chemistry, environmental protection and information technology in a bilingual vocational secondary school in Budapest, Hungary

ABSTRACT Students’ attitudes toward science are complex phenomena depending on numerous factors. The factors studied in this work are students’ interest in science, their enjoyment of science lessons and career interest in science. Our objective was to investigate the attitudes of students based on these factors. The main question was whether the students enrolled in a bilingual vocational secondary school for chemistry, environmental protection and information technology had chosen the institution and their professional field according to their personal interests and whether this interest was independent of age and gender. Surveys were conducted in two academic years (2015–2016 and 2017–2018) among students from grade 0 or 9–12. Three factors of the Test of Science-Related Attitudes (TOSRA) questionnaire and self-constructed questions were used and analysed in our research. The results for the self-composed factors of our questionnaire provided evidence to state that the choice of school and that of profession is based on personal scientific interest of students. We have found a negative relationship among TOSRA items and age; regarding gender, there are differences among chemists and IT specialists.

Struktúra és communitas

The paper describes the relationship between subcultural and school/institutional interpretationsin the inner discourse of an alternative school (the ’Diákház’) in Budapest. Interpretations andpractices, that belonging two different interpretive frameworks, appear simultaneously andintertwined in the Diákház communication scene. This contributes to problem-solvingcapacities/knowledge that individually do not appear in either of the two. In this discourse, thesubcultural manifestations of difference, deviance, marginality, resistance or communitas, andthe manifestations of knowledge, autonomy, responsibility and the hierarchical structure of theschool sometimes appear in opposition, sometimes in reinforcement to each other. The knowledgeformed in the discourse can be used by the Diákház to keep (formerly drop-out) students withinthe institution, and by the students to reduce their own feeling of invalidity. In this way, theDiákház is able to use the two opposite social states, communitas and structure, to its ownbenefit

'The Jews Are Just Like Any Other Human Being.’

Our paper presents the results of a study which was conducted between 2016 and 2019 in a high school in Budapest. The research attempted to measure the impact of the Haver Foundation’s activities on high-school students. The Foundation implements activities about Jewish identity, thus we intended to see whether the different activities of the Foundation changed the attitudes of high-school students, and whether they affected the formers’ level of knowledge and the associations they make with Jews. In line with the sensitivity and complexity of the research topic, and in order to create the broadest analytical framework, we followed several classes in a longitudinal setting by triangulating our methods. Results confirm the importance of these activities, especially with regard to the increase in the level of knowledge about Jews and Judaism. They also indicate that there is a need for such informal settings in high-school education. However, more extensive research needs to be carried out to obtain more accurate results about the reduction of prejudices.

Course Material Adaptation for Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) – as a form of education when students learn non-language subjects in an additional language – had already existed in ancient times, but the term itself was adopted in 1994. The driving force behind its development in Europe was the birth of the European Union. If European citizens want to enjoy the benefits of an integrated Europe, they need to be able to communicate at least in one foreign language. According to the European Commission, CLIL is one of the innovative methods capable of improving the quality of language teaching. One of the obstacles to the general implementation of CLIL was initially the lack of appropriate teaching materials. It was examined whether there is adequate course material available for teaching first aid in English. The document analysis revealed that there is no suitable course material. A five-hour first aid course was held for Grade 8 students at three bilingual primary schools in Budapest. To do this, an introductory, a theoretical, a practical, a summary, and an assessment lesson were developed. This article presents the steps of course material development for Content and Language Integrated Learning and illustrates it with practical examples.

МЕТАФОРА В ДИСКУРСИВНОЙ ПОЭТИКЕ АРПАДА КОВАЧА

The article provides an overview of the main theoretical and methodological premises of discursive poetics and indicates the key role of metaphor in this analytical and interpretive frame. The topic is delivered on the basis of a long-term research of Árpad Kovács who proposed an original integrative analysis (from sign to genre particulares) when referring to the classic texts of Russian, Hungarian and Western European literature. He is also known as the founder of the Budapest school of discursive poetics. In contrast to the range of linguistic, philosophical and aesthetic definitions of metaphor, Kovács complements and develops the poetical tradition of metaphor studies and demonstrates the multidimensional phenomenon of metaphor by analyzing and interpreting literary texts. The metaphor in Kovács’s discursive poetics demonstrates the organic connection between poetics and the existential sphere of life experience. The article gives a set of concepts such as “intonation metaphor”, “existential metaphor”, “metaphorical digression”, which were introduced or reinterpreted by Kovács.

Dressing toddlers at the Emmi Pikler nursery school in Budapest: caregiver instrumental behavioral pattern

ABSTRACTThe goal of this research is to analyze the instrumental behavior of the caregiver at the Emmi Pikler nursery school in Budapest while dressing children from two to three years old to go outdoors to play in the garden. In order to study this routine in its usual context, the observational methodology has been chosen, adopting an ad hoc field format. The results show that the caregiver follows an instrumental behavioral pattern while dressing children, even when the child`s attention, interest or desire moves away from the ongoing activity. To the extent that these educational behaviors involve the child’s cooperation in the task, they promote both the child’s understanding of the concept of care, and the acquisition of dressing skills.

An extract of the analysis of the Monkey Puzzle Boy

A client who wants his story to be made into a case history presents for psychoanalysis. An artist all his adult life, he expresses his sexual trauma through his art. His more recent artistic output is in the form of avant-garde video montages. The analysis stalls, becalmed by a failure to understand a circumcision event, a punishment for sexual expression. If Ferenczi and the Budapest school model learning from therapeutic errors, freedom of thought, sincerity, and experimentation, then this case history illustrates those. Real sexual trauma and a real circumcision event are entangled with fantasy and art in attempts to come to terms with them. The circumcision event was better understood with multiple readings of Carlo Bonomi’s work, which became part of the analysis. The wider Ferenczi community also became part of the story of the analysis, and in a kind of mutuality the analysis wants to make a contribution to that body of knowledge.

Supervision for our times: countertransference and the rich legacy of the Budapest School.

In this paper I ask what an investigation of the Budapest model of supervision may add to our psychoanalytic imagination. The Budapest model confronts us with a number of crucial questions for contemporary psychoanalysis, including the question of envisioning ways of working on the countertransference of the analyst. I discuss the lack of memory that surrounds the Budapest model, and I read it in relation to the unsettling issues it stirs up, including those of authority, horizontality, and the ethics of psychoanalysis. In the Budapest model, supervision can be seen as a form of "double dreaming" or of "dreaming up of a dream". In particular, in drawing on the writings of Sándor Ferenczi and Michael Balint, I point to some principles behind the Budapest model and to the epistemic, technical, and ethical implications of their ideas. I also work toward a Ferenczian "translation" of the idea of "parallel process".

“Illiberal Democracy” in a Central European Country

The American election and its results in 2016 made it timely to provide a psychoanalytic analysis of the similar political events in the United States and in Hungary. Applying psychoanalytical theories to society has always been part of the tradition of the Budapest school. This paper argues that Hungarian and other transgenerational trauma theories can help us understand these developments. The author begins in using these theories to analyze the impact of political regimes on societies and individuals in Central Europe after World War II. She then continues to look at the political transformation that took place in 1989 in the socialist countries existing since 1945. This transformation promised liberation. But, this paper argues, the unexplored past resulted in the emergence of hierarchic, irrational political forces. The paper uses social and individual examples to help demonstrate these processes.

Michael Balint's Word Trail: The 'Ocnophil', the 'Philobat' and Creative Dyads.

In this paper, I discuss how Michael Balint arrived at the concepts of ‘ocnophil’ and ‘philobat’, which refer to two kinds of object relations. I look at the correspondence between Balint and the classical scholar David Eichholz. The two crafted these words together in a passionate exchange of letters. By recognizing the importance of creative dyads in psychoanalysis, we gain more insight into the creation of psychoanalytic knowledge beyond the frame of individual authorship. I read the collaboration between Balint and Eichholz in its historical and theoretical context, particularly in relation to the Budapest School of psychoanalysis, where intellectual collaborations had an important place. The Budapest School was Michael Balint's first home, and it shaped his epistemic and psychoanalytic style. Balint constructed his psychoanalytic theories in a spirit of openness, maintaining a commitment to conversations between psychoanalysis and other disciplines.

The Psychoanalytic Languages: On the Intimate Rivalry of Michael Balint and D.W. Winnicott

This article presents and discusses a two-decades-long correspondence between Michael Balint and D.W. Winnicott. Alongside closeness and friendship, the letters reveal tensions, disagreement and even rivalry between these two figures on three main levels: personal, cultural and theoretical. The debate can be framed around the question of whether or not the British School of psychoanalysis that emerged in the 1950s – and in which Winnicott and Balint were arguably the most senior figures – was a continuation of the psychoanalytic tradition that developed before World War II by Sandor Ferenczi and the Budapest School. The article argues, however, that there is another meta-theoretical level to the debate between the two: they passionately try to define what psychoanalytic language is, and disagree about its real nature.

Success, Needs and Decency: For Marysia Márkus

In the following paper I will analyse three key themes characteristic of the life and work of Marisha Márkus. This paper was originally read for a conference on her work at the time of her farewell from the University of New South Wales in 2002. Success, Needs and Decency are signature themes that percolate through her work. Under the theme of success I turn to central ideas in her early sociology of women and to the meaning of success in the world of the life of women. This theme has a particular existential theme for Marisha, who nursed her eldest son Gyuri for the last 30 years of her life. The concept of radical needs was a central concept of the work of the Budapest School. Marisha’s relatively less well-known interpretation of needs is arguably the most fully democratic reading of this theme that came to be better known in the work of Agnes Heller. I finally turn to the concept of decency, which for Márkus adds value to the key ideal of civil society that became so important in the transition of so-called socialist societies during the collapse of the communist regimes in the Eastern bloc.

Learning from the Budapest School women

What can Western feminism hope to learn from women whose feminisms were originally shaped by experiences behind the ‘Iron Curtain’? In the first instance, an acute sensitivity to the importance of a politics that is responsive to needs. In its social democratic heyday, Western feminism had embraced a politics of contested need interpretation. Now, though, a neoliberal version has converted feminism into an attitudinal resource for the individual woman who is bent upon success. The takeover was made easy by the poor self-understanding of social democratic feminism. My paper will compare Agnes Heller’s theory of ‘radical needs’ and Maria Márkus’s account of the ‘politicization of needs’ and apply both to the normative clarification of endangered feminist agendas. We look to the Budapest School women for more than just a way of conceptualizing the political radicalism of modern feminism as a social movement. Women need heroes too and a reflection upon the dignified and admirable lives of Agnes Heller and Maria Márkus has much to contribute to an ongoing search for a feminist ethic of the self.

Mess is more: Radical democracy and self-realisation in late-modern societies

The following discussion highlights the sociological relevance of Maria Márkus’s work for the Budapest School’s concept of ‘radical democracy’. A brief historical sketch exhibits how the concept has emerged. It is in particular the ‘messy’ social conditions for equal and free forms of self-realisation in civil society that underpin radical democracy which are central in Maria Márkus’s critique of the neoliberal state, identity formation and a gendered achievement principle. Her approach, I argue, can be advanced as a prism for the critical analysis of contemporary issues. To do so, I contend that late-modern societies are increasingly defined by a paradox with a pluralisation of identity claims in civil society on the one hand, and tendencies to homogenise identities on the other by concurring economic and political forces. A democratisation of everyday life, and with it diverse and plural forms of self-realisation, appears to be under homogenising pressures from governments and markets alike. This will be briefly demonstrated using Maria Márkus’s work, which also points toward possible departure points to advance a critical sociology of radical democracy.

What Happened to the Participants of the Math Olympiad 1971? A Multiple-Case Study Concerning the Occupational Success of the Winning Team from Hungary, Math Olympiad-Occupational Success.

The aim of this multiple-case study was to find out how the most successful team of the 1971 Mathematical Olympiad in Hungary developed professionally. It is impressive that in 1971, no fewer than four participants on the Hungarian team received gold medals and four participants received silver medals. Seven of the eight analyzed participants on the team came from a grammar school in Budapest. Three of the four gold medal winners achieved remarkable academic positions. On average, professional positions were achieved (as scored by the magnitude prestige scale) well above the average for a normal grammar school sample. Interestingly, the calculated average of the Hungarian team (156.5 ± 15.5) was slightly higher than that of the comparison team from Sweden (142.8 ± 30.5), but this difference was not significant (p = 0.351). In principle, excellence seems to result in excellence. For several former participants on the Hungarian team, it was shown that they continued to be extremely successful in the field of mathematics, with a thematic focus in the field of statistics and probability calculations.

Early childhood education and cultural learning: systematic observation of the behaviour of a caregiver at the Emmi Pikler nursery school during breakfast / Educación temprana y aprendizaje cultural: observación sistemática de la conducta de la educadora Pikler durante el desayuno

The objective of this study is to analyse the everyday behaviour of a caregiver at the Emmi Pikler nursery school in Budapest as she manages the breakfast of the 12 children aged 2–3 under her care, as an example of quality care. The methodology used was observational. The design was idiographic, follow-up and multidimensional, and the observation instrument is a field format developed ad hoc. The relations of sequentiality and association among the caregiver’s different behaviours are analysed: the actions related to the breakfast itself, the use of space and the gestures accompanying the actions. The results, which were obtained via a lag sequential analysis, demonstrate the existence of a twofold behavioural pattern, instrumental and relational, in which each instrumental action inherent to breakfast is associated with a specific, unique repertoire of postural accompaniment, a combination of gestures and postures on the part of the caregiver, thus forming a clear, univocal sequence for children to learn the meal routine autonomously.

Másság, felelősségvállalás és tudás. A szubkulturális és intézményi értelmezések összefonódásának haszna egy alternatív gimnázium belső diskurzusában

The study, based on the results of an ethnographic research, examines the internal discourse of an alternative grammar school (the „Diakhaz”) in Budapest. The students of the Diakhaz are early school leavers who mostly feel some rejection towards adults, teachers and schools. The teachers of the Diakhaz are trying to work with these students partly with pedagogical methods different from traditional ones, partly with the shaping of the school discourse. This paper shows the main (subcultural and institutional) themes of the school discourse, and how the themes of the subcultural construction and interpretation of „otherness” (difference, diversity, deviance, marginality, resistance) intertwined with the central concepts of school operation (independence, responsibility, knowledge) help teachers and students to work together. By maintaining the link between the two parallel interpretive frameworks the teachers of the Diakhaz have developed a unique approach within Hungarian education for successfully working with deviant and dropout students and for dealing with the problems that lead them to drop out.