Remembering Tom Ormay

Major Tom 23/02/1934 – 20/02/2022

I’m not the one who knows all the facts about Tom, but here are some thoughts.

Tom in CSAKIT (the Hungarian group analysis institute). I keep mainly feelings, memories and illuminating thoughts about him.

The first meeting was with him at the Sports Hospital, in the training of the Overseas Department of the London Group Analytical Institute. (In 1989, he did not live in Budapest at that time.) He was able to sit as Buddha as he waited patiently and confidently for us to speak. He conveyed with great conviction the view he later expressed in his book that one could truly find oneself in a relevant group.

I gathered most of my experience about him when he was the president of CSAKIT and I was the treasurer (8 years, if I recall correctly). I understood how important “Tom Ormayness” was for hime here in Hungary as well. He proved that he had acquired his identity for life in England. We went back and forth between the bank and the notary public to have his signature authenticated. We used to meet in a mall on Saturdays to handle banking matters. I always had to remind him, to sign the documents by his formal birth name: Ormay Antal Pál.

I listened with great interest his story of his escape in 1956 (when the Hungarian Revolution against the soviet regime took place ended by soviet victory). His walking and hiding on the “embankment”. When it was dangerous to travel by train, he got off of it and continued by foot, using the bank of the Danube as the reference to arrive to Vienna. He told this story several times, almost reliving it. Arriving to Vienna he resumed organizing work in the refugee camp quasi immediately. It was his job to assign mainly students to host countries. He organized an Oxford team when it crossed his mind that he was a student himself, and why wouldn’t he go there as well. It was a coincidence. He did not succed in getting in to Oxford in the absence of a scholarship, so he graduated from the University of London with a degree in philosophy. But he recevied support in the form of free psychoanalysis: he enthusiastically went to John Klauber for ten years.

I asked him why he returned home. The simple answer he gave me was: „as I began to get older, I started to be cold in England”.

I always waited him to be honored on one of the anniversaries of 1956. As far as I have knowledge of it, this never happen. I’m sorry about it.

The Hungarian group analysis can thank a lot to him. He encouraged us to think independently, to take initiative. His idea of the Winter Workshop was good as well, since he introduced it, it has become a tradition. We didn’t help him fill it with content for a long time, as we relatively left him alone in the editing of the the Matrix (Hungarian group journal).

But he was ahead of us. I learned from him that serving good causes is important!