Although  I did not take part in psychology lessons, however, the time spent in Győrffy István People's College and the experiences of my youth were decisive concerning my relation with psychology and social psychology.
I can say that the atmosphere and the community of the college (where I lived during my university studies) gave the background of my intellectual development and the progress of my mentality, personality -- my interest in and attachment to human relations, social psychology.
Mutual trust and solidarity penetrating everyday forms of life are the basic experiences of college life and "rallying world"; mainly in the first period (before the penetration of manipulative procedures and well-known distortions). This general feeling rooted in the pathos of the undertaking of public life, the dynamics of communities and personal responsibility. All in all, it was a great school of social psychology for everyone living in those times.    
At the age of 20  I became the director of  Petőfi Sándor Történész Szakkollégium (College);  a year later, when I was 21, I was charged with the position of secretary general of Népi Kollégiumok Országos Szövetsége (National Association of People's Colleges). In both cases I found myself in the empire of practical psychology, connected to mainly the pedagogy. Day by day, I confronted the problems of individual lives, the tensions of human relations connected to one another and the collisions of  individuality and collectivism. My experiences were complex. We had to create dynamic images of personality, mostly by common effort, on the notorious critique and self-critique events of the college. You could ponder on the individual perspectives and how to have the position of a leader among peers.

No conscious perspectives were taken in the activities mentioned above at that time, only the general demand of reflection. It was stimulated by the seminar of pedagogy - psychology taken place in college center, its leader was Ferenc Mérei. The discussions of the leaders and mentors of the college became special workshops, where they tried to understand the secret how personality is formed and the secret of the effect of community pedagogy; sometimes I also held lectures on the issues and wrote articles concerning the relations. One of them was the source of debates in summer, 1948. It was about the new questions of people's colleges.

If I wanted to describe my orientations (at that time), I would say some general interest in the fields of social sciences and human science without exact professional commitment; however, it included sociology, pedagogy, antropology and psychology as well; and history, though in the background but not neglected.

***

To my opinion, in these days psychologist is a versatile personality whose profession covers a wide range of fields different from one another (sexologist, laboratory researcher, doctor and teacher,  prison psychologist among others).
If we focus on the professions of a researcher - educator psychologist and the doctor treating patients, we can say that there are differences in knowledge and practice, qualities are diverse but not better or worse; theoretical psychologist is different from the doctor, because they approach to the mysteries of human psyche but both of their activities are quite valuable and important.  
I am convinced that all psychologists need to have the ability to wonder at other people and themselves, diversity of human relations and exciting and "mysterious" facts. The other ability is closely connected to the first one; it is curiosity towards the things we deal with, not ourselves.
Professional skills can be learned if we have intrepidity, talents and devotion, passion to acquire more and more information to do our best.

***
I had to arrange the matters of my university studies. The movement of people's colleges was liquidated. An opportunity was offered to study in Moscow and I seized the opportunity to study on psychology - pedagogy faculties; to my mind these studies were not so far from cultural policy that I was interested in; and, what is quite important, it qualified me for teaching these subjects in institutes where students learned to be teachers.

I spent 4 years  in Moscow and I learned several useful and some useless things; anyway, I studied diligently. I regard information acquisition of Russian history and culture as profit; in addition, I was lucky because some outstanding representatives of Russian psychology taught me such as M. Rubinstein, Levitov,  Kozlov among others. I had opportunities to have an insight of psychological workshops, heavy debates were included.
I spent many hours with browsing and searching old journals, reading debates and works published in the 1920s (such as Freud's writings, some of the most important ones).  The reference work by Woodworth and the great work by Rubinstein were also available; the latter one was published in Hungarian in the 1960s.
Besides dealing with psychology, I was also interested in the two branches of pedagogy, namely theory of education and history of education.
I had a close sight of Makarenko-research  and text publication  and I had some contact with people who were included, Makarenko's students.
I think that development of modern theory of education needs him and his work, although we can cast doubts on  some of his ideas (and parts of his experience). Anyway, one important and favourite section of my work is Makarenko-research; I spent much time and energy with the research; its good result was shown by the feedback of the colleagues of Makarenko laboratory in  Marburg.

***

I returned after graduation in Moscow in 1953 and I decided to accept what was offered; well, I was sent to the center of youth movement where I dealt with education related matters, including agitation and propaganda. I tried to do my best, however, I did not feel good because of the atmosphere and styles of contact (relations) that changed.  In autumn, 1955, I became aspirant of philosophy but some months later I gave it up because I was on the board of Petőfi-circle, so I  had a close view of the dramatic days in 1956. After those days, I taught in an elementary school in Angyalföld (13th district of Budapest) as a  teacher of psychology, for 5 years.
Besides teaching, I started the first phase of a big project; my plan was to write the history of  "socialist educational thinking"; well, I wrote a monography about the pedagogical ideology of utopistic socialism and the life and pedagogical system of Makarenko. Then my interest changed;  
first  I worked for Educational Seminar of the capital city, later I went to National Educational Institute (1961-1965); I was engrossed in researches related to the theory of education and I extensively dealt with further education of teachers. I was satisfied with my role in editing a reference book of educational methodology and launching a model experiment in the field of education. However, I longed for something more, actually,  the world of phenomena that can be examined empirically more exactly, something more  practical as well.
I thought that I had to work  within a more proper professional frame, a strict one. In given circumstances, the two most important empiric bases of educational thinking were the useful pieces of information in the fields of sociology and psychology.
My experiences of the age when I was a student and the developing renaissance of sociology in Hungary facilitated sociology related information acquisition. I saw the hard conditions of social psychology in Hungary: there were no real researches in that field, there was no institutional framework  of researches, sociology was no part of curriculum. I initiated to set up a team for sociology of education in the National Institute of Education around 1963. As the first "team activity", we edited  a thematic issue of Pedagógiai Szemle (Pedagogical Review). The topics of the common research projects were created by the colleagues of the team, including the mechanisms of social determination how professions were chosen, the way of life of students living in the capital, and particularly I was interested in the structure and dynamics of their social world. So, the relations of education, sociology and psychology were shown by some social-psychological groups of ideas.

***

In 1965, I initiated (or we can say suggested) that I could work for the group of social psychology in the Institute of Psychology; actually, I was one of  the "founding fathers" who established a section of this direction of research.  I have been working there for 3 decades and so I have the profession-wide perspective; hopefully, I can go on working there, in the institutional frames of psychology.  

I chose psychology due to the sense of something missing; I wanted to have the existence of the researcher, a kind of engrossment - to be absorbed in the profession.  I think that one of my good decisions was the choice of social psychology.

I encourage (or you can say suggest to) my younger colleagues that they should make use of the years at the age of 20 - 30.  I am aware of the fact that due to my sidetracks of political life and other fields I have big drawbacks concerning participation in the field of international progress and the development of professional skills to be a really productive researcher.
As there was a huge gap between Hungarian and international quality of profession (of social psychology), we had to learn and work quite hard, including teaching in higher education.  (I have been teaching  social psychology in faculty of arts in Eötvös University since the end of the 1960s.) Fortunately, I could participate actively in the remarkable progress of social psychology in Hungary, including institutionalization and development of the conditions of relevant education and information provision and acquisition.
It can be said in general that thematic interest of the researcher is rooted in various experiences of personal life, being reflected indistinctly sometimes. I was not an exception; my orientation covered the phenomena of community and group psychology on one hand. 
On the other hand, I also focused on social identity as a researcher, observing the theoretical, historical and practical problems of identity-evolution; some monographies and essays were written on the basis of the research.

The years I spent in the Institute of Psychology were quite good for me, although much time was spent with officer's tasks (duties of the head of department, deputy manager, later director); however, I think that there are various ways to be in the service of a science and scientific institute.

I cannot name anyone whom I could regard as my professional master; I always endeavored to acquire pieces of information in the field of social psychology, all sorts of knowledge that were available either from the famous figures of psychology or from my colleagues. To keep abreast of the international condition and development of social psychology required the most energy. The feeling that the break of a decade might be too much was quite strong, however, I could do my best with an outlook mainly on Russian and French events and development, due to my language knowledge.
To my mind, my oeuvre was impressed and affected mainly by two trends of approach; first, it was gestalt psychology - Kurt Lewin and his school (Asch, Festinger, Deutsch, Cartwright and others) - which oriented to social psychology and the research center of group dynamics established by Lewin. I was interested in group and community psychology  as well which goes beyond an individual focus and integrates social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and international influences to promote positive change, health, and empowerment at an individual  level, the relationships of the individual to communities and society are included. There was another trend which kept alive the tradition of sociology in social psychology, that was symbolic interactionism; so I spent much time with studying Mead's work and its impact.

It would be quite difficult to show and describe the scientific trends of the past 3-4 decades reliably; there was a quick change from the middle of the 1960s.  Classical experimental general psychology was quite dominant in the first part of the that period due to its results and the researches of comparative  psychology  (by the staff of the Institute of Psychology). The eclectic interest in social psychology increased in the 1970s and it affected personality psychology and  developmental psychology, too. In the 1980s the revival of depth psychology together with the expansion of  clinical psychological practice. It is no doubt that psychoanalysis became the great factor of intellectual life in Hungary, in the last few decades -  beyond the boundary of psychological professionalism.

***

I am convinced that the key question (or key element) of the existence of psychology in Hungary is to raise professional level steadily in all respects: to be well-informed, to raise professional level concerning aspects, methodology and theoretical quality as well as creativeness and education of  young aftergrowth. In this respect, hardly appraisable changes took place in the last few decades; however, it is necessary to keep the demands in mind, adapting them to modern and postmodern ages. These efforts are supported by 2 new achievements:  psychology is set free from all external ideological pressures and the frames of professional socialisation became international.  I wish we were able to seize the chances. 
There is no up-to-date science without either established and strictly logical theoretical reflection or persistent exploration (and observation) of facts.

Human psyche is so complex that number of the ways of approach is infinite, actually. However, it is quite deceptive and disadvantageous if the ways of approach are divided, if any of them is regarded as a more important, more valuable way than the other ones.

The psychologist - either a researcher or a practical professional - is also a citizen who may have clear-cut opinions about public affairs and essential issues of human life. Naturally, it is expected to express them sharing with the public and, at the same time, the psychologist should work (and live) with the attitude to explore and examine.
I was looking for (we can say exploring) the limits of practical operativeness of social-psychological knowledge and chances for applying it. I also wrote several essays  covering the issues of work ethic, lifestyle, social atmosphere and the ways how to create scapegoats, among others. It was specially important and valuable for me to manage the complex research on the phenomena of deviation in Hungary and publication of the results, too. In the course of that work, many taboos had to be broken and new forms of interdisciplinary co-operation were created.

I am convinced that psychological researches cannot be carried out without well-founded culture of the history of science. The researcher's duty covers taking stock of his predecessors' activities, results and deadlocks of earlier researches concerning the phenomenon observed by him. Extensive information acquisition cannot be saved.

Last but not least, I say some words about my worries.  As I see psychology in Hungary is slivering (like parts of the mosaic); its privatisation is also too intensive, well, this process has a good feature: all trends and initiatives can establish their societies (or associations) and centers for practice, too. However, if there are no mutual integrative tendencies, the science of psychology might be divided into some "private empires" with one or more persons in each one.

I worry about the decreasing chance for research as an appreciated career on labour market; the "flow of the second line" of young researchers gets slower; colleagues in their forties and early fifties are the last "great generations" in that field. Where are the representatives of the younger generations? Hopefully, they are learning in universities (in Hungary or abroad).
The established  professionalism is an essential requirement and not only in the short run; moreover, it applies to all fields of psychology.

Source:  F.  PATAKI (1997): Töredékes számvetés  (Incomplete account). In: Pszichológia, 17. 3. sz. p. 302-311.