Determinate

‘If I say to a killer, “You are good,” it is bound to have such a suggestive effect that all unnatural evil and “possible” defiance or cruelty will be driven out of him.’

Attila József

The roots of the above quote by Attila József go all the way back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rosseau openly breaks with the dogma that man is born burdened with original sin and that only by the grace of God can he be transformed from a natural man into a spiritual man (homo spiritualis). The French philosopher believes that a child is good at birth, only the corruptions of human society make it bad: ‘Everything is good when it leaves the hands of the creator of things, but everything is degenerate in the hands of man,’ he writes in his novel Emil, or On Education.

Rousseau entrusts the duty of caring for and educating children to the parents, mother and father. However, if for whatever reason (infirmity) the mother is unable to care for her child and the father is busy and does not raise his son, the mother may be replaced by a nanny and the father by a tutor.

Attila József’s mental health problem (borderline personality disorder) centres around similar events. His father suffered from alcoholism and impulse control disorder. He left the family at an early age, so Attila József grew up without a paternal role model. His mother was depressed, with suicidal tendencies.

Throughout his life, the poet lost the people close to him. His mother died in 1919, and he did not attend her funeral. He was orphaned at the age of fourteen.

Trauma in childhood is a very common feature in the life of borderline patients. As a result, they are unable to form secure relationships with almost anyone. Attila József’s personal tragedy is that this disorder was unknown at the time, and he was treated with the then very progressive psychoanalysis in the summer of 1931. He had three psychoanalysts: Dr. Samu Rappaport, Dr. Edit Gyömrői and finally Dr. Róbert Bak – none of them succeeded, and their treatments clearly worsened the poet’s condition.

Attila József saw Rappaport Samu as a father figure, later fell in love with Edit Gyömrői, and when she repeatedly and clearly rejected his feelings, he attacked her with a knife. It was during this time, while working with Gyömrői, that he wrote his Notes on Free Ideas, which gives a picture of Attila József’s inner world and thinking.

A person with borderline personality disorder is very extreme and unpredictable in his or her reactions. At times they can seem kind and appealing, and at other times they can be extremely angry, unable to control their emotions. They can also have opposite attitudes towards the same person, sometimes with love, sometimes with hate. And because their relationships are extreme, their attachment problems make them fearful of loneliness and anxious. They need constant care.

Adjustment problems have accompanied Attila József throughout his life, and his relationships have often been unsuccessful. He did not really get on with his fellow poets.

Determinate aims to present the life of Attila József, based on his Free Ideas, his poems and other studies, and to highlight the difficulties a boy has to face in becoming a man not having any emotional security.