We are building up a library of podcasts and papers to share lectures, talks given at meetings and some personal experiences of Balint work. Choose from the list on the right of this page to access a podcast, or click on a link below to download a paper.

Balint Work and the Flourishing Practitioner To download the paper, Click here: Balint work BJGP 2023

Theoretical aspects of Balint work

Although psychoanalytic vocabulary is not used in Balint group discussions, so making groups accessible to clinicians with no analytic knowledge or training, the theoretical basis of Michael Balint's method does originate from analytic thinking. You may like to read the following paper given by Esti Rimmer, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Newcastle. Also note the podcast of a talk by Gearoid Fitzgerald in the list on the right. To download the paper, click here: Theory? Who needs theory?

Some thoughts on supervision

This paper was given by Psychotherapists Helen Sheldon and Judy Malone at the Balint Society Study Day on 9th February 2018. To download the paper, click here: Thoughts on supervision

Podcasts

The 2023 memorial lecture “Balint work and the Flourishing Practitioner” was delivered by Dr Sally Hull, a GP in Tower Hamlets for over 35 years, and with vast experience in Balint groups. She was one of the authors of “The Doctor, the Patient and the Group” 1993. As a Reader in Primary Care at Queen Mary University London, she undertook research related to health inequalities and chronic disease management.

“Balint at the Cutting Edge: Contributing in a Changing World”

The 20th Michael Balint Memorial Lecture was given at the Medical Society of London, on Thursday 25th April 2013 by Dr Andrew Elder, a retired GP, current Balint Group Leader and past President of the Balint Society. In this lecture he considers the potential role of Balint Groups in GP practices, as they evolve in an increasingly complex National Health Service. He helps us to think about how practices can preserve themselves as a secure base for patients and those who work there and reminds us of Michael Balint's focus on the value of primary care in the presentation of unorganised illness, as well as the aim of Balint training to encourage practitioners to listen and learn how to 'be' with patients. 

The 22nd Michael Balint Memorial Lecture was given by Dr Pat Tate, GP and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, on 28th April 2017 at The Medical Society of London. With a title of 'Rules', Dr Tate takes us from an inventive conversation with a grandchild, via Alice in Wonderland, through to Freud and his rules of psychoanalysis (which he often broke). She goes on to talk about the subsequent development of psychoanalytic practice by Michael Balint, amongst others, giving insights into the experiential nature of the Balint work we know today. If you are feeling bound up by rules, then this talk should release you.

21st Michael Balint Memorial Lecture: 24th April 2015

 "Tact and Timing: the rhythm of interventions"

 Professor Ken Robinson, Psychoanalyst Ken Robinson works in private practice in Newcastle, is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at Northumbria University. He is also Course Director of trainings provided by the North of England Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists and a training analyst in child, adolescent and adult psychotherapy.  He teaches widely in the UK and Europe, and his recent and forthcoming publications include work on the history of psychoanalysis, therapeutic action, Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Marion Milner and Donald Winnicott. Please note: the original lecture included a film clip and a music clip. For copyright reasons these are excluded from the podcast, but Professor Robinson's comments on the clips are retained for their own worth.