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PARTISAN REVIEW
they have something they can lose, but when they have some enthu–
siasm for what they can get.
William Phillips:
I think Abel is right about the American scene. But
perhaps the situation in Hungary is different.
Ivan Lust:
I think it's time to move to a joke about Hungary. It is an
old joke, about taxes and salaries. The joke says that in Hungary
you receive salaries as in Pakistan or Ethiopia and pay taxes as in
Sweden. It gives no reason to be very optimistic about the future.
But in spite of that, what is interesting in our spiritual situation, our
intellectual situation is the following: everybody says that psycho–
analysis is very sensitive to power and totalitarianism. You see that
Freud's books were burned in the Third Reich, and his ideas were
persecuted in the Soviet Union in the thirties and in Hungary in the
fifties. When we look at the situation of the profession, we can say
that we are no longer totalitarian because we are quite free to ex–
press our ideas, to give lectures, to teach psychology to medical
students, and to propagate psychoanalytic ideas. All of us are
strongly involved in some kind of teaching of psychotherapy, in
universities and postgraduate training, and so on. It's relative free–
dom, and maybe this began in the seventies as a kind offaint reflec–
tion of the movement in Europe of 1968.
Judith Szikdcs:
I just want to add something: it started, as some phi–
losophers said - paraphrasing the famous line from the
Communist
Manifesto,
"The spirit of Communism swept over Europe" - when the
spirit of Europe swept over Communism.
William Phillips:
What is the basis of the hopelessness? Is the basis of
the hopelessness, or whatever lack of hope exists, the fact that Hun–
gary is not in control of its own fate? And that this complicates the
situation and creates these ambiguities and paradoxes?
IldiM MohOczi:
I came from Hungary after the revolution in 1956, so
what is happening in Hungary reminds me a little of the spirit before
1956, when the revolution broke out and freedom of speech, freedom
of the press was beginning. Not to such an extent as now, much less,
but there was tremendous hope then, and there was no desperation
whatsoever. And when the revolution broke out we were so happy;
food came from the peasants, from the country, and was on the
street. Shops were open, and nobody stole. It was an absolutely
hopeful, ecstatic situation, and it lasted four days. The Russian
tanks demolished part of Budapest, and we know what happened
afterwards. So I think that the people who still remember these times
have certain doubts about what is taking place now, because one
