This is a small talk about the imprtance of Ferenc Mérei both as a reseracher of com munitirs, and as a social guru of communities.

1. Networks in the life and science of a left
wing liberal psychologist:
Cross talk between politics, personal
networks, and science in the work of
Ferenc Mérei (1909-1986)
Csaba Pléh
pleh.csaba@ektf.hu
Eszterházy College, Eger
CEU, Budapest Hungary
Talk at the ESHHS meeting,
Oulu, Finland, July 22nd, 2014

2. Outline
• Stages in Hungarian psychology and the
place of Mérei in them
• Stages in the life of an avant garde
communist
• Networks in the life and science of Mérei
• Creating networks and analyzing them
• The police charges against Mérei
• Analyzing networks: Sociometry and
psychodrama in Hungary
• Mérei as a cult figure

3. Ferenc Mérei
• A guru and opinion
leader in Hungarian
psychology for two
generations.
• Second most
frequently mentioned
reference person in
the autobiographies
of his contemporaries

4. Politics and psychology in Hungary
Politics Time Trends Names
Liberal monarhcy 1880-1918 Philosophical preparation Posch, Pikler
Liberal monarhcy 1880-1918 Early innovative empirical Rancshburg, Nagy L. Dienes,
Revolutions 1918-1920 Radical reorganization Géza Révész, Ferenczi
Conservative 1920-1930 Science and emmigration Gyula Kornis
Consolidated conservative 1930- 1940 Re-insitutonalization Paul Schiller,Várkonyi, Szondi,
Hermann
Halfdemocracy 1945-48 Institutions and emmigration Ferenc Mérei
Dictatorship 1949-61 Repression and survival Lajos Kardos
Softening 1962-1975 Training and research, nets
Cosolidation 1975-1988 Widened traing, Westernization of research

5. Main life events, politics and
profession for Mérei
• Studies in Paris numerus clausus Surrealists, Kassák, Wallon
• Return to Budapest illegal communist Szondi, ed. centers
• War Jew forced labor Returns as Red Amy officer
• 45-48 educ positions appointed leader Reform educ, activity books
• 49-56 inner exile purged due to pedology artist circles
• 56-58 active leader pre revolution, revol, after modern education
• 58-61 prison alleged and real groups prison journals
• 63-80 clinical leader gradual softening clinical, sociometry
• 70-86 clinical lab, pension tolerated left informal opinion leader

6. The forming influences on Mérei
Psychology

7. The forming influences on Mérei
Art and politics

8. Student in Paris
• French art life
• Kassák and
Hungarian avant
garde
• Economy and
psychology
• Wallon, Piaget
• Moréno
• Illegal Communist
movement Comrade
Mák

9. 1920s education in France,
with H. Wallon, Surrealists,
Communist movement
Constant participation in
innovative art movements,
art psychology (1986)
1930s return to Hungary,
child guidance, Szondi Lab,
Patronage
left wing book on
professional guidance (1942)
1942-43 Labor camp
1943 Escape to the Soviets,
returns as a read Army officer

10. 1945-49 Leading communist figure
in Hungarian education and
psychology
institutional leader, associates
with youth movements, child
based communist education,
books on joint experience (1947a)
and pedology (1948), combining
Piaget and psychoanalysis, works
on Rorschach (1947b), first
studies of sociometry
1950-1956 unemployed unwanted
intelligentsia. ‚Home spy’ is Imre
Lakatos the LSE philosopher
art movement, theory of allusion
(1975)

11. 1956-58 reform
movements, revolution
redesigning
education, anti-
authoritarian left
wing
1958-1963 prison
sentence for anti state
and network activity
journal in prison
(1985), theory of
allusion, dream theory

12. 1964- 1976 chief psychologist
State Institute for Psychiatry
launches Hungarian
sociometry (1971), its
derivatives like
contactometry, theory of
spontaneous groups (1989),
and psychodrama, creates a
national center of clinical
psychology (1966), with
entire batteries of methods
(Mérei-Szakács, 1974),
publishes the canonical
textbook on child
development (Mérei-Binet,

13. The oeuvre of Mérei
• Child centered education. Wallon, Piaget
• Rorschach and Lewin inspiration
• Sociometry and group processes
• Unconscius allusions and group
belongingness
• Systematic psychodiangnostics

14. Mérei, F. (1942): A pályaválasztás lélektana.
[The psychology of profession choice.]
Budapest, 1942)
Mérei, F. (1947a): Az együttes élmény. [The
joint experience. ] Budapest: Officina
Mérei, F. (1947b): A Roschach-táblák felszólító
jellege. [Auferordningscharacter or Ro.-
Tables. ] Magyar Pszichológiai Szemle, 16,
115-125
Mérei, F. (1948):Gyermektanulmány.
[Pedology]. Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda
Mérei, F. (1949): Group leadership and
institutionalization. Human Relations, 2, 23-29

15. Pedology
• Piaget, Wallon,
Zazzo
• Social
psychology
• Sociometry
• Psychoanalysis

16. Mérei, F. (1966) Rorschach próba Vol. I-V.
Budapest: National Institute of Psychiatry
Vademecum. Republished in 2009 by Medicina.
Mérei, F. (1971) Közösségek rejtett hálózata.
[Hidden network of communities]. Budapest:
Közgazdasági
Mérei, F. (1985/1998) Lélektani napló 1-4. 2nd
edition [Psychological journal]Budapest: Osiris
Mérei, F. (1986)"…Vett a füvektől édes
illatot" (Művészetpszichológia) [Psychology of
art] Budapest:
Mérei, F. (1989): Társ és csoport. [Companion
and group.] Budapest: Akadémiai

17. The Rorschach: Method and
theory
• Auferordnungscharacter
1946
• Series of method
booklets
• 5 aspects
• Special indices
• Elaboration
• Schizofrenia

18. Group and the individual
• 1948: group interaction can create an
"experiential surplus”
• Leaders and group values
• Pairs and groups
• Multimethod sociometry
• Actometry in small children
• Contactometry (Fonyó) in adults . Like
Dunbar’s name generators

19. The message of his 1947 book:
Joint experience
• Human social world has a real
existence.
• It is not merely a control factor
• We experience things differently in
groups compared to individual
experience.
• Differentiation between togetherness
and societal factors.

20. In his pedology book
Phenomena in the study of social relations
can be classified under two explanatory
principles (p. 157)
The heightened
pleasure of joint
experience, the
individual experiencing
of social relations
provides the point
beyond which we
cannot reach with our
methods of
investigation..
• .
• The societal model,
that explains the
formative influence of
external relations
beyond which the
individual appears as
a member of a social
class or layer, as a
representative of an
institution.
(sociology).

21. Group and nation
Fidelity to childhood groupings is thus a
preparatory stage to the fidelity of the
adult towards his country and his social
class.
Thus the essence of social education is
that children should live in organized
group life and should have functions
with responsibilities in their groups (p.
159.)

22. Mérei the prisoner and group
psychology
He is charged to be He works on groups
a group organizer and group psychology

23. The police group charges
against Mérei
• Gál, Éva (2013) :’Insinuation and
dissolution’.
• The real charge is the case of
Hungaricus, a pamphlet in 50 copies
criticizing the first months of the Kádár
regime. Reached the West.
• The police aim is to create a ,group’ (their
word) underlying these counterrevolutinary
activities.

24. Why is ‚group’ crucial for the
cops?
• ‚Groups’ in their terminology implied
premeditated subversive actions
• There was to be no spontaneity not even
in the ‚counter culture’ groups.
• Groups are organized to undermine the
system.
• In reality strong networks indeed existed
but less premeditated than thought by the
police

25. The fate of the ‚Mérei group’
‚Group’ is a semantic and cognitive
construction of the police.
It is based on the networking efficiency of
Mérei.
Out of prison, he becomes an even more
important practitioner and theoretician of
real groups

26. Social in the prison
• Works on several writing
projects
• Social relations in
manifest dream content.
French socio tradition,
Two challenges. Vis a vis
the Freudians: manifest
dream is also full of
hidden factors. Vis a vis
the individualistc
traditons: almost like
Halbwachs.
Diary: allusion. The hidden
grroup symbolics in children
and adults.

27. Hidden network of communities
1971 Sociometry
• Why community and
not group? Socialist
favored word
• Network. Underlying
web of reations
• What is hidden?
• Formal (official)
• Informal (hidden)

28. Sociometry by Mérei
• Group features
• Indices for groups and for
individuals.
• Mutiple. From Wallon.
• In what sense?
• Sympathy
• Functions and abilities
• Who is a good leader
Who is the most
talented?
• Folllowed by K. Járó and
S. Veres

29. The challenge of informal
groups
• Informality and direct democracy
• The inaptness of official leaders
• Emotional and personal in leadership
• The good leader partly adapts to the
group
• Pairs and groups. The danger of pairs

30. Mérei the cult person
86.000 hits in Google
Has a school named after him
Now a guidance and education
center (which was lead by him
and a university college (2011)
named after him.
A publication price and a
distinguished talk of the
Hungarian Psychological
Association.
Has 17 cites up to 2000 and 67
in the first decade of our century

31. The impact of Mérei in
Hungarian Psychology

32. Some major works on him
Bagdy E. – Forgács P. – Pál M.: Mérei emlékkönyv. (Mérei Ferstschrift.) Budapest,
(1989)
Borgos, A., Erős, F. & Litván, G. (2006, eds.): Mérei. Élet-mű (Life and work of
Mérei):Budapest:Új Mandátum
Erdély-Hermann, I. (1987) Mérei obituary E J Soc Psychol, 17, 259-266
Erős, F.(1995): Mérei Ferenc életműve és a magyar szociálpszichológia. [The
ouevre of Ferenc Mérei and Hungarian social psychology.] In: Kiss, 1995a, pp.
123-136
Erős F.: Mérei Ferenc fényében és árnyékában. (in the light and shadpow of
Mérei) Budapest, (1989)
Forgács, P. (1987): Epizódok M. F. tanár úr életéből
Mérei Ferenc portré film. [A portray movie about Mérei.] Budapest: Balázs Béla
Studio
Gál É. (2013) : Lejáratás és bomlasztás. Tudósok, tanárok a titkosrendőrség
látókörében. ’Insinuation and dissolution. Scientist, teachers int eh focus of scrte
police.’Budapest: Corvina – Nagy Imre Alapítvány
László, J. 2004

33. Human message
• Openness and crosstalk are important
resilience virtues
• Symbolic and factual relations between life
and work
• Politicized scientific life can still lead to
important discoveries in social science
• Psychologists are and have to be full
persons
• Less formal social science can be fruitful

34. The crosstalk issues
• There are left wing even Communist
liberals
• Cross talk between political engagement
and psychology is twofold
• Network based psychology. Dynamic
developmental social image of man
• Police based, research based and
personality based interests in networks
and hubs

35. Hidden contradictions in Mérei
• Avant garde – Commnunist discipiline
• Party soldier – Civil society (bourgeois)
• Spontaneity – Institutioan person
• Group conformity - Creativity
• Cartesian rationality – Emotions
• Social adaptation – Humanitarian clinician
• Leadership – Understanding
•

36. An addendum
• His radical education
paper (democracy in
education, 1949)
appears 35 years
later, in 1985
• Published by a police
agent of the new
generation…
• Gusztáv Haberman
M. (Pécsi Zoltán,
Algo, 1971?, 1979-
88)