HUNGARY AFTER GLASNOST
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not solve, psychic problems of the youth, for instance, the drug prob–
lem, and so on. When the official organizations could not cope with
these problems, the government tried to use the Church. As for the
atmosphere in our profession, there we also can feel what Dr. Hidas
said is characteristic of Hungary as a whole, and it is a paradoxical
situation . That is, nobody really is optimistic, and yet people feel
that rules which extended for decades now can be broken. And
therefore it is perhaps with a kind of Don Quixotism that one writes
about how to reform Hungarian psychiatry. That is something new
in the latest issues of
Hungarian Psychiatry,
which are full of such ar–
ticles . Thus one has a feeling that the Hungarian situation is a dance
on the razor's edge. Rationally, one cannot have much hope for free–
dom, but now the government supports some new ideas and activi–
ties. Nobody knows the real meaning of this position.
Lionel Abel:
What confuses me is this : You say that there's hopeless–
ness and there are no illusions, and you also say there's an explosive
situation. An explosive situation exists
only
when there are the condi–
tions for a revolution, among which there must be belief in better–
ment. ...
Judith Szikdcs:
Can't you be desperate?
Lionel Abel:
No. I don't think so. I think that from what we have seen
in this country in the black movement, the antiwar movement, and
the feminist movement, the people in these movements had hopes .
William Phillips:
Abel's point is that explosive situations exist only
when people have some hope that their actions can produce some
positive results . And if there is a situation without hope, Abel
wonders in what way the situation could be explosive. At least, that
has been the experience in the West. Judith says, however, that des–
peration can produce an explosive situation, by which I assume she
means the situation in a country under Soviet domination is dif–
ferent .
Gyorgy Vikar:
Again I can say that there is some paradox in the Hun–
garian situation. Real desperation perhaps also can bring an explo–
sion. But that is one side of the situation. The other side is that
something happened during the last thirty years. In 1956 people
didn't have cars and weekend houses. Now many do and fear they
could lose them. So it is an explosive situation, when people who
could create an explosion have a fear of losing what they have, even
if they don't have much.
Lionel Abel:
There is evidence that you get social movements when
conditions improve , when people feel better. And it's not only when
