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The European Journal of Mental Health launches a series of articles entitled ‘Unravelled Chapters of Our Common Past’ that primarily describes the history of operation of helping professions especially exposed to the effects of dictatorship (psychotherapy, charitable work, educational activity) in the era of state socialism. In order to eliminate the serious setback experienced in human disciplines we need to learn about the reasons and processes that led to the damages, after which we need to establish an extensive set of conditions, rephrase values, and ensure a long socialisation period, all of which support values taking root again. In order to do so resources need to be researched, professionals in the post-socialist countries need to cooperate and realise the new and extraordinary opportunities which lie before them on their common path. Research into the status of various disciplines in the era of the past dictatorship, and their description according to appropriate criteria in as many studies as possible may provide assistance in this, making our view of the past more articulate and differentiated. That the professionals who have firsthand knowledge of this age are still alive and active represents a special value. The more studies are received, the more refined our view of this period of the region will be.

Our paper is a survey of the methodology of two effectivity studies of postgraduate training in community mental health promotion in Hungary. The aims of our study of the Helping Relationship Course were multifaceted: we intended to measure how much the student internalised a philosophy of non-directive counselling, the recognition of the client’s non-verbalised emotions and the possibilities of application of the helping relationship promoting community mental health, as well as the skills of reflecting on group behaviour. This was realised by means of a written case study. In the Appendix of our paper we also bring the evaluation questionnaire. In the Activity Supervising Course, the various helping activities and their representatives are introduced. Within the frame of the effectivity study we followed the impact of these presentations on representatives of other professions. Teachers and pastors were in the focus of the study: essays written on provocative questions concerning these two professional groups were content analysed, comparing the answers of different student cohorts (freshmen and graduates). In the case of both studies we briefly demonstrate the content and the form of the course discussed. This is followed by showing the specific aims and methods of the study in more detail, including the methods of collecting material and analysing data.

In contemporary societies, health is widely recognised as the most valuable personal asset. It has undergone significant reconceptualisation in recent decades, of which the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) is a major document, advocating empowerment and community mental health thinking. Such concepts have fallen on fertile ground in East Central Europe, where a veritable community mental health promotion movement has sprung up, soon developing institutional means of disseminating the novel views. A discussion of the East Central European scene is introduced by an overview of the emergence and key elements of community mental health thinking and of the possible levels of corresponding intervention. An examination is offered of the deforming effects of dictatorship on community mental health, using the related notions of salutogenesis and Sense of Coherence to deepen the analysis. An exemplary graduate program was developed and established in Hungary even before the Ottawa Charter stated its directive on training. It is designed not so much to convey specialised knowledge as to impart a set of skills and competencies through which helping professionals are better equipped to practice their primary vocation and promote the mental health of the wider community. The program's goals, contents, structure and specific features are described in detail, emphasising knowledge of self and society, multidisciplinarity, a holistic approach and society building.

This study provides an overview of how psychotherapy’s Hungarian representatives tried to safeguard and transmit psychotherapeutic training and practice during the time of socialist dictatorship. At first, even some Soviet ideologists had considered psychoanalysis to be compatible with Marxist ideology. However, over the course of a few years, socialist ideology exerted pressure on psychotherapy’s theory, training, and therapeutic practice. This was done initially on an ideological level, but later it increasingly resorted to physical violence as well, both there and through its export to a Hungary occupied by the Soviet army. All this was similar to its stand against the arts and literature. The first thing to appear as a result of this was a denial of the necessity of psychotherapy (stating that psychotherapy was only needed because of ‘capitalist market conditions’, with even the teaching of psychology being nearly stopped); later anyone could face serious repercussions for belonging to any school of psychotherapy, especially the analytic. It was also a part of the arsenal of those in power to put crucial centres of therapy decisively under the leadership of appropriately aligned neurophysiologists for long periods of time. The state kept these under strict control, and healing was reduced to medication procedures. The authors provide examples of the modest internal and external opportunities that nevertheless arose for prominent representatives of psychotherapy to solve these dilemmas. With the weakening of the dictatorship, the war on psychotherapy also subsided in a relative and inconsistent way. At this point, events in the politics of science were characterised by the degree of loyalty to the Soviet association, who were visibly abusing psychiatry, and the fight to preserve the relative independence of this field of science. The final part of the study touches upon one or two dilemmas of the heroic age of starting over that surfaced at the time of the political system’s change.