History of the Balint Group

The name is that of Michael Balint a Hungarian psychoanalyst. His main work was as a psychoanalyst at the Tavistock Clinic, in London He started groups for GPs in the 1950s to study the doctor-patient relationship, he described them as “Training-cum-research” groups.

He worked closely, and ran groups with his third wife, Enid –a Social Worker and Marriage Guidance Counsellor. Her influence on medical training is probably as great as his.

Who were Michael and Enid Balint?

Michael Balint was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest in 1896, the son of a General Practitioner
After qualifying in medicine in 1918, he became interested in psychoanalysis after first hearing Freud speak. He then studied in Berlin before returning to Budapest in 1924 to continue his training under Sandor Ferenczi. His first wife, Alice, a Hungarian, was also an analyst. It was during this time that he conducted his first exploratory teaching groups with general practitioners.
Earlier, in 1920, and before training as a psychoanalyst, he had obtained a Doctorate in medicine and initially had worked as a biochemist.
Balint worked as a psychoanalyst in Budapest during the Fascist regime, but in 1939 he left Hungary with his family and came to the UK. They settled in Manchester where he worked as a consultant psychiatrist before moving to London in 1945.
In 1948, he was appointed as a Psychoanalyst at the Tavistock Clinic where he worked until his retirement in 1961.
In the same year that he was appointed, a group of social workers led by Enid Eicholz (later Balint), had begun to develop techniques for treating couples with marital problems at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations,.
Michael Balint joined her in this work and together they developed the ‘case discussion seminar’ in which the focus of the group was on the interaction of the couple and between the couple and their social worker.
Balint then instituted a similar training programme with GPs to understand more fully the emotional problems they encounter every day in their practices, his so-called ‘training-cum-research’ seminars. His first group was recruited at The Tavistock in 1949.
In 1957 he published his masterpiece “The Doctor, his Patient and the Illness” which described the results from this ‘first’ group of GPs with whom he worked. Balint Groups were born.
Enid Balint had been born in 1903 in Hampstead, North London. After school at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, she graduated from LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) in1925. Wartime work with refugees and couples in distress led her to establish a network of citizen’s advice bureaux and marriage guidance centres.
Her experience of listening to traumatised couples led her to recognise the need for a deeper understanding of human relationships. In 1946 she met Dr Tommy Wilson, an imaginative and forward-looking psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the Tavistock Clinic. Dr Wilson was a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine and was interested (like Balint) in applying psychoanalytic understanding on a wider basis than in the consulting room. Enid Balint always thought of this meeting as a particularly lucy break. He introduced her to the works of Freud and gave her an entrée into the thriving and innovative post-war community at the Tavistock Clinic.
As well as collaborating with Michael Balint from the beginning of his work with GPs, Enid became one of the pioneer-founders of couple psychotherapy in UK. She trained as a psychoanalyst and continued working as a training analyst until late in her life.
Following the publication of “The Doctor, His Patient and the Illness” (1957), four further GP research groups were convened. Michael and Enid Balint led a second group (1966-1971) which published its findings in “Six Minutes for the Patient” (1973). This proved to be Michael Balint’s last research project with GPs. He died in1970.
After Michael’s death, Enid Balint remained actively involved in leading groups for GPs, encouraging and training leaders (in UK and in other countries) until well into her eighties. She led two further research groups to continue the original work into understanding the uses and difficulties of the drug doctor. “While I’m here, doctor” (1987) and “The Doctor, the Patient and the Group: Balint Revisited” (1993).
Enid Balint died in 1994.
One further research group within the same tradition was led by Michael Courtenay and Erica Jones, both of whom had worked closely with Michael and Enid Balint. “What are you feeling, doctor? – identifying and avoiding defensive patterns in the consultation.” (2000).
The founders of the Royal College of General Practitioners in UK were profoundly influenced by Balint’s ideas; they formed the basis of modern postgraduate training for general practice. Balint first used the term “patient-centred medicine” in his description of the group he ran at University College hospital for medical students in 1969.

IBF Board

2022:

President: Tove Mathisesen, Denmark

Vice President: Guido Flatten, Germany, Andre Matalon, Israel

General Secretary: Albert Lichtenstein , USA

Treasurer: Jean Daniel Gradeler, France

2019:

President: Michele Paree, Belgium

Vice President: Guido Flatten, Germany, Jean Daniel Gradeler, France