Her place in the psychoanalytic firmament is an interesting one. In terms of psychoanalytic genealogy, she descends from Freud via Rickman (and less directly via Winnicott, who was analysed by Strachey), and from Ferenczi and the Hungarian tradition via, again, Rickman, with Balint added in; this background, together with more than a little respect for Klein’s thinking, creates a recipe for a unique position. Enid Balint’s own gifts, already available to her by the age of thirteen, and certainly visible to her schoolteachers, underlie these later influences, which gave rise to her own voice. To end, I would like to quote some of Enid’s own words, as spoken to another analysand, Juliet Mitchell, about her own way of analysing.
The small thing that the patient tells the analyst is probably not in itself what matters, but what matters is not some big thing either. What the small thing leads to may be some other very small thing, perhaps from the past. What often happens in analytic work is that the patient brings something about the neighbour smelling horrible, or something nasty in this particular room this morning; who has been there perhaps. You listen. You don’t say anything then; you don’t make an interpretation which turns it into something important, about the smell of a mother, or whatever. If you do that, you may be neglecting and misunderstanding the patient by understanding too quickly. You have to wait and see what it is about, and perhaps you find it is about a smell when the child was small, or perhaps something quite different. You don’t know to begin with, but if you come in too soon with an interpretation, you might miss a dream, for example, by interrupting the flow of association. In my view it’s much easier if you have an association, then maybe a dream, then more associations; and then you get back to the bad smell at the beginning. But if you come in too soon, you are doing what I am anxious about at the moment, both in general practice but more so, much more so, in analysis, which is that people may hang on to set-piece interpretation. I think we have given up the idea of its being all the Oedipus complex, or all parental neglect, or all anything. We get tiny little important details which really make things alive for the patient, and then, once you do that, the patient tells you something different and unexpected. That is the transference in the true sense.
Judith Szekacs-Weisz (2012-09-10). Ferenczi for Our Time: Theory and Practice (The History of Psychoanalysis Series) (pp. 97-98). Karnac Books. Kindle Edition.
authentic analysis 