FREE TO MOVE,FREE TO BE

The Hungarian Pikler-Lóczy Institute for Infants’ Well-being and Healthy Development could not have been created without the fundamental contribution of the Budapest School’s approach to Object Relations. For historical reasons, very little is known in psychoanalytical circles about this extraordinary experience and work. Pikler created an original model with a space for partnership, reciprocity, and the baby’s “true” autonomy, which focuses on the baby’s self-initiated motor development: “freedom to move”. The atmosphere of this world around babies can be related to the “rêveries” of Ferenczi about the necessity for an early, caring environment provided through adult tenderness as it appears in his Clinical Diary.