Die Situation der Psychiatrie in Ungarn im Sozialismus bzw. während der sozialistischen Diktatur

This study provides an overview of how psychotherapy’s Hungarian representatives tried to safeguard and transmit psychotherapeutic training and practice during the time of socialist dictatorship. At first, even some Soviet ideologists had considered psychoanalysis to be compatible with Marxist ideology. However, over the course of a few years, socialist ideology exerted pressure on psychotherapy’s theory, training, and therapeutic practice. This was done initially on an ideological level, but later it increasingly resorted to physical violence as well, both there and through its export to a Hungary occupied by the Soviet army. All this was similar to its stand against the arts and literature. The first thing to appear as a result of this was a denial of the necessity of psychotherapy (stating that psychotherapy was only needed because of ‘capitalist market conditions’, with even the teaching of psychology being nearly stopped); later anyone could face serious repercussions for belonging to any school of p...