Changes in Hungarian academic psychology after the end of “people's democracy”

Abstract The paper surveys the last 30 years of Hungarian academic psychology. Around 1989–1990, the time of the great social changes Hungarian psychology was rather Westernized, but still a relatively small scientific field and applied profession. The opening and liberalization of politics made psychology in Hungary a booming profession and a rich research field. Education of psychologists was spreading, and becoming more Westernized in textbook usage and reading materials. Entrance numbers at two universities with 80 students were replaced by 2010 by 6 university programs and about 8000 incoming students. The training system is a Bologna type BA + MA + PhD system, The educational booming has its own problems. As all university subjects, psychology training is also underfinanced, with high teaching loads and a move by university management towards applied areas, neglecting basic research. The research activity is characterized by a fivefold increase of English language publications coming from Hungary over a 20 years period. University research was strengthened, and competitive grant systems were introduced, whth good success aretes by psychologists. Here again, managerial thinking questions many aspects of basic research and liberalized science management. These factors are peculiar to psychology, but they do have an impact on it. The paper gives some details about one chapter of academic psychology, cognitive psychology. Institutionally, support by the Soros foundation in the 90s for the university cognitive programs had as one consequence that three departments of cognition are active in Budapest today. Another aspect of insitutional development was the series of multidisciplinary conferences in Hungary (MAKOG), and Hungarian involvement in international graduate training programs in cognitive science. The most successful cognitive group, at Central European University (5 ERC grants, publications in leading journals) is recently chased out of Hungary by anti‐Western and antiliberal legal moves. This would certainly have a detrimental effect on Hungarian cognitive psychology for quite a time.

of Russian sources was declining, and English literature as a frame of reference dramatically increased (C. Pléh, 2017, pp. 190-191). This entire process of Westernization is not interpreted as a positive by all. Kovai (2017) for example treats it as a "self-colonialization" process with negative connotations of mimicking the West, and ignoring local social problems in Hungarian psychology. In my view, Westernization corresponded to an individualizing modernization in social life. You may not like this, but this is certainly the process that has given place to the birth of modern psychology all around the Western world.
This Westernization was constrained and only relative in a repressive tolerant manner. Nonparty members, for example, could gain professional leadership positions, but under strict HR control from different levels of party leadership. International relations were allowed but again under strict control. (See about this as a eneral issue the analysis of Szakádát & Kelemen, 1992 regarding the Hungarian communist party based "nomenclature" system). All foreign publication manuscripts had to have a secret police controlled nihil obstat until 1989, but this control has become mostly formal. No one was reading your manuscripts anymore, the materials were just filed. Most psychologist have been government employees even if they worked in guidance services or in industry.
As for the content of academic psychology, one could summarize the situation by saying that you were not supposed to preach Marxist psychology, but you were not really allowed to speak against Marxism or the Party line in social issues either. Most of academic and professional psychology tried to neutralize psychology from the ideological context, approaching psychology to natural sciences and medicine. In this process of neutralization, there were still ideological infights between mainly Frankfurt school and Vygotsky inspired efforts to create a Marxist psychology and the mainstream professional trends (see Erős, 1991 for an original effort, and some of the papers in the volume edited by Borgos et al., 2019 for more contemporary continuations). Even in the modernized and professionalized context of socialist Hungary, psychoanalysis had a difficult time. Psychoanalytic practice was only gradually becoming officially tolerated. And for example the single most symptomatic communist party intervention in the 1960s into university curricula at Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest was related to psychoanalysis appearing as part of a course on personality, where the teacher (Magda Marton) had to drop the course and leave the faculty. No Freud book appeared in Hungarian until the mid-1980s. The histrtoian of Hungarian psychoanalysis, Judit Mészáros, (2010, 2012 gives a detailed account of this. At the same time, both in child guidance and mental health care state run and financed support systems integrated most of applied psychology, with much of "dyamaic psychology" content included.

| SOURCES USED IN THIS ACCOUNT
For the changes starting with [1989][1990] there are fortunately several sources available in Hungarian. The Hungarian Psychological Association had two thematic sessions in the mid-2010s as part of their annual conference, discussing the history of Hungarian psychology mainly during the last half century. This was published as a bulky Hungarian volume edited by Cs. Pléh et al. (2019). Second, as part of a general overhaul of the last 30 years of Hungarian science, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences composed an internet resource in Hungarian (Falus, 2022).
As part of this project, psychologists surveyed their own field in 15 chapters. That is also available in Hungarian as an internet resource (Urbán & Molnárné Kovács, 2022). The most important parts of the psychology survey are also published in the Hungarian Journal of Psychology, also in Hungarian but with extensive English abstracts. Most of the conspectus here relies on the substantial material in these surveys.

| THE SOCIAL IMAGE OF PSYCHOLOGY CHANGING
In the changes appearing after 1989 general social, political and economic factors and psychology specific ones could be differentiated. Rainer (2017) is a god source about the interpretation of the structure and moving causes of these general changes. I use the accepted interpretation of the changes as a liberalization, mainly regarding PLÉH communication emerged (to be later curtailed by the managerial leadership of the ministry of education), and new universities were launched based on regional and religious interests. In 1989, at the end a 25 years socialist development, two degree programs of psychology with 5 year training were offered, for a few dozen students, one in Budapest (Eötvös U.) and one in Debrecen (Kossuth U.) After 1989, among the newly spreading programs psychology was the most popular one, and its public popularity and promotion by university management remained constant through three decades. The intention of university management and the public interest meat with the dissatisfaction of psychologists (both academic and professional) who considered themselves to be excluded from faculty positions in the socialist times. This later feeling especially characterized colleagues working at the research Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who provided thence the core faculty at some of the newly emerging psychology programs, for example at Janus Pannonius University of Pécs.
In the process of spreading of psychology programs by 1992, beside Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest and Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Janus Pannonius University of Pécs also started a psychology degree program. By 1995 the intake of new students doubled compared to 1990, from 80 to almost 200. By 2000, six psychology degree giving universities showed up in the Hungarian higher education palette and they continue to function in 2022. Attila József University of Szeged joined the club, first in 1996 as a subsidiary of Debrecen, and from 1999 on its own right. Two denominational universities also started to give psychology degrees. In Budapest, Pázmány Péter Catholic University and Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church (Calvinist).
The student numbers were constantly increasing. By 2010, incoming students were competing for 800 slots.
Until the mid-1990s these are numbers under general ministerial control, from then on they are mostly based on decisions by autonomous universities. The 50 times increase in 35 years is remarkable. The average yearly increase was 12% (C. Pléh, 2019, p. 156). These numbers refer to state financed places. During the last decade the numbers increased by a further self-financed quota of students, and at several training places English language programs for international students were also started at Eötvös, Károli, and Pécs universities.
Psychology is peculiarly popular during the general increase of higher education. It should still be seen in the broader context. After the 1990s, connected to the changes in the political system, there was an enthusiastic increase based on the political opening in Hungarian higher education student numbers in general for 2 decades.
According to the data of V. Berde and Vnyols (2008), between 1990 and 2005 the entire Hungarian higher education influx showed a 3.5 increase. Psychology should be seen in this context. During the same time psychology entrance numbers showed a 7.5 increase. Thus, the popularity of psychology is very high compared to other fields. In recent application numbers (2020) psychology is the second most popular subject after business.
At the same time, this remarkable increase did not go without problems. That is true for the entire higher education system. As data from the National office of Education analyzed by E. Berde (2003); V. Berde and Ványolós (2008) showed as a crucial factor or consequence of the underfinancing of higher education after 1990 the faculties proved to be insufficient in the entire system. The underfinancing is sometimes accompanied by fights over tuition. In principle, Hungarian conservatives want no tuition, while liberal-left wing politicians want tuition. In reality, however, witgh the increased of "self-financed" students, about 25% of students pay tuition.
A crucial aspect of underfinancing is the teacher-student ratio. In 1990, the teacher to student ratio was 8, and by 2005 it was 16. V. Berde and Ványolós (2008) showed that this is a trend characterizing all Eastern Europe, with increasing class sizes and recently in Hungary sometimes 12-14 weekly teaching hours for faculty. The Law of Higher education lists 8 h for full professors, and 12 h for assistants. We do not have the actual numbers broken down for psychology, but it certainly is of the same magnitude. A firther factor is that psychology programs usually are parts of the humanities faculty in Hungary. In this context, the general underfinancing and insufficient faculty is also more specifically combined by a shortage of classroom and lab places, and shortage of extramural internship places. The underfinancing, sometimes accompanied by political fights over the issue of tuition, is a general characteristic of higher education in Hungary, it remains true both under left/liberal and conservative nationalist governments.

PLÉH | 35
Thus, in particular for our profession and science, we should not have a rosy picture of the increasing educational interest towards psychology in Hungary. It was certainly a difficult task to create four full fledged new teaching faculties over a single decade, between 1996 and 2005. The faculty coming from the academy research institute certainly helped. They provided core faculty of experimental psychology in Debrecen and Pécs, and in social and developmental psychology at Pécs. There was also a shortage of leaders. Just to indicate with 1 number, in early 2022 out of the 6 psychology training university institutes with their roughly 30 departments, 3 institutes are chaired by teachers who are not full professors. That is rather strange in light of Central European traditions. At the same time, while three of these institutions have English language programs, and all of them do participate in Erasmus and other cross European exchange programs, mainly exchanging students, there is practically no non-Hungarian faculty in any of them. Thus, internationalization is mainly true on the student andf research levelés, but not on the level of faculty. At the same time, while in the 1990s basic academic foundations were strong assets of the then existing programs (and were duly criticized for that by the practicing psychologists), by today four of the six programs (Debrecen, Szeged, Pázmány, and Károli) do not have any serious experimental psychology teaching faculty.

| THE CONTENT OF PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING
The modern psychology program initiated in 1963 in Hungary aimed to include professional training as part of the 5 year curriculum. This was soon changed, and from the mind 1970 s there was a separation of basic level diploma and specialist training.
Many new developments after 1989 concerned the content and organization of the 5 year basic level training.
On a general level, curricula have been liberalized as to their content, but at the same time, with a national quality assurance systems gradually put in place, the organization has become gradually less open and most importantly, less flexible compared to the early 1990s. The early 1990s offered much choice among special topics, and even choice of instructors at some places. That was the happy 5 years of sudden liberalization.
There were many changes in the accession of books and journals, Gradually, compared to the 1980s, where every individual book was a treasure, Hungarian psychologists were more and more able to read all relevant literature. One sign of the basic liberalization of content is the use of textbooks. In most broad areas, American textbooks are still used in translation. This is true for introduction, where the Hilgard-Atkinson book is still in the market (I am using always the version that was translated to Hungarian, in this case Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2003).
Incidentally, it is the most popular Hungarian language psychology book, with sales over 80,000 copies. There is a series of successful general textbooks. In developmental psychology, the Cole and Cole (1996) book, in social psychology Smith et al. (2015), in personality Carver and Scheier (2000), in clinical psychology Comer (1998). There are of course new textbooks written by Hungarian authors as well. I am only listing this sample of introductory American sources to show the extent of Westernization of content.
Hungary as the single East European country took part in the formation of the joint framework for psychology training in Europe (EuroPsyc, Lunt et al. 2005). That helped consciousness raising about the curricular organization of university programs in psychology inside Hungary as well. Hungarian pscyhologist can obtain the EuroPsy certificate through the Hungarian Psycholgical Association. Most importantly, the EuroPsy participation helped to keep the "psychologist" label for colleagues with a 5-year training.
Another important factor was local, and related to regained university autonomy. On the initiative of György Hunyady, a leading social psychologist and in the early 1990s dean of humanities faculty at Eötvös University, as part of a general liberal revision of training at humanity faculties, a credit based flexible system with theoretical and applied specialization from Grade 3 was introduced in psychology. Hunyady (2019) described himself this process and the later organizational development leading finally to the creation of a new faculty of Education and Psychology at Eötvös University. The system initiated by Hunyady was a de facto two level system, preceding the introduction of the Bologna system of BA and MA in psychology. It was, however a 2 + 3 year system (rather than the Bologna 3 + 2), and in its intention it contained much flexibility and freedom and responsibility allowed for the students, than the later, now existing Bologna system.
In the mid-1990s, an originally university initiated and self organized national higher education program accreditation system took shape in Hungary. This had impacts on psychology as well, surveying all existing and new programs (see their homepage MAB, 2022). As part of the regained university autonomy, PhD programs were formed at the universities, including psychology programs. Around 2005 all of this was fit into a "Bologna" type: BA-, MA-PhD-level training. six universities are giving BAs in psychology (called "behavior analyst," while seven institutions give MAs in psychology. Beside the full fledged programs already mentioned, Budapest U of Technology and Economics (BUTE) also started to train industrial and cognitive science MA. There are four PhD training places in psychology (Eötvös, Debrecen, Pécs, BUTE). Training requirements were reformulated several times during the last 20 years. Parallel to this process, in governmental decisions central student quotas were abolished, which led again to a twofold increase of students in psychology, and to an increase in fee paying students around 2010. At the four universities giving PhDs in between 1993 and 2019, 396 PhDs were defended, with the bulk of them (42%-, 165 candidates) at Eötvös University. The gender distribution mirrors better than before the actual ratios in the profession, 71% of the new PhDs being female (Demetrovics, 2019).
In the MA training level, there are seven different specialties, with a jointly developed roughly equivalent content at the different training universities. The most popular one is developmental/clinical at five universities.
Clinical/health psychology is offered at four places, interpersonal/intercultural track is offered also at four places.
Three universities offer cognitive, three social/organizational, three industrial/organizational and three guidance/ school specializations. The postgraduate training requirements for psychologist specialist continue to be in place.
Thus, taking an applied MA track does not make you a specialist. It is rather a preparation to look for employment in this field as a nonspecialist psychologist.
"Independent" applied work was only allowed for psychologists having obtained a specialized training based license, usually following a 2-3 year training. Already in the 1980s the specialist training usually went in training programs while the candidates are working in the given field. This is still true today. There are many refinements both on the level of specialist training and legal health regulations that allow, most importantly psychotherapy practiced by expert psychologists after sufficient training. Buda et al. (2009) show he difficult articulation of psychotherapy ractice in Hungary, while Harmatta (2019) follows the development up till today, and Szakács (2019) gives the legal background as well.
Though my paper does not go into the details of applied psychology changes two remarks are relevant about them. First, there is a clear renaissance of psychoanalysis both on the intellectual scene and in widespread practice (Mészáros, 2010(Mészáros, , 2012. Second, there is a continous downsizing of state run support systems. As a result, both in guidance, and clinical work and even in organizational psychology private practice has become dominant in the 2000s. Together with the general liberalization of the content of teaching, management remained either amateurish, or in the hands of managers inherited from the previous times. Similar to other leaders at the same university, for example, the two initial deans between 2003 and 2015 of the newly founded Faculty of Education and Psychology at Eötvös U, two psychologists, have been former influential Communist party members, I do not want to ostracize them by mentioning this, merely to indicate that there is an inertia of university leadership. The implication was that only who showed how to manage at other times were eligible managers in the new times. This is true according to Polónyi and Kozma (2022) for the entire Hungarian higher education system.
There is a built in tension with the new more professional management ideals and style fro the 2000s that is specifically felt in psychology. Ambitious managers of a newer kind emphasize grant related activities and scientific publications as the essence of university work today. For many mid career people at universities, this may lead to downplaying teaching activities. There is a constant tension between the teaching and research efforts. The only PLÉH | 37 sensible way out of this trap is to decrease teaching load and allow for internal sabbatical like systems. At the moment, individual deals with faculty managers are in place instead of generic solutions.
Together with the general increase in university autonomy after 1990, the recent decade shows warning signs toward reorganization. Hegedűs and Polónyi (2015) two Hungarian higher education sociologists analyzed different aspects of university autonomy in Hungary between 1994 and 2014. In state universities, ownership and budget, student numbers and fees are usually not subjects of autonomous decisions, while hiring is autonomous, and curricular content is partly autonomous.
During the last 2 years, under the conservative nationalist government of Viktor Orbán these issues took an interesting new turn, where the results still have to be seen. Most of the state universities were suddenly privatized, but in a peculiar manner (see Higher Education Law under WEB resources). The newly nominated governing boards of the "private universities" are contemporary or previous members of the conservative government, or government affiliated business representatives, and the private universities shall have their state budget but on a contractual basis. It seems to be a strange centralized Thatcherite system, that combines the eternal East European

| Internationalization of Hungarian psychology
The acquired new freedom around 1989-1990 also meant further opening towards the West, but also increased interest on the part of would be Western partners. This was shown early on in many factors. A first factor was international psychology conferences being organized in Hungary around the time International conferences taking place in Hungary certainly helped to put Hungarian psychological research on the international intellectual map. Another important component was provided by individual and institutionally organized invitations and involvement of Hungarian researchers, teachers, and students. Such schemes are the CEEPUS from 1994, later the EU based ERASMUS scheme and the likes. Preceding these, in the 1990s, several unilateral sometimes generous efforts were also received to foster integration of Hungarian researchers and universities into the European schemes. In the cognitive section I list some examples but these were true for many areas, developmental, social, organizational. This was accompanied by integrating Hungarian psychologists also into the ESF and ERC systems, both as applicants and as evaluators, overseeing and initiating scientific cooperation, and creating new competitive grant systems.
The increase of international (practically English) publications was a characteristic consequence of the opening.
During the decade of 1980-1989 on the whole 373 Hungarian psychological publications appeared in international outlets, in the next decade 558, and between 2000 and 2009, 2060 according to data form the PsychLit database (C. . This fivefold increase certainly was a cosmopolitan move. This is also shown by the PhD requirements, where while almost all dissertations are still written in Hungarian in psychology, international publications are a must by now. The internationally visible Hungarian presence in psychology shows a 14-fold increase over 50 years, from 1970 to 2020. It is still small, of course, as Hungarian research output in psychology represents 0.02% of the international output today as indicated by Schubert and Vasas (2010) as well as by C. . In some regards, like absolute numbers weighted by the number of researchers, Hungarian psychological publication activity is less intensive compared to some of the neighboring countries, like the Czech Republic, but in some subfields, such as cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology researchers publish in higher reputation outlets, with more citations compared to the neighbors (Schubert & Vasas, 2010).

| The strengthening of university research
On a lip service level, expectations during socialist times socialist times explicitly spelled out that research belongs to a university vocation. However, research was still concentrated preferably in the research institutes of the Academy, and only sporadic high standard individual efforts were visible at the universities in the 1960-1970s. This was the case for psychology as well. Changes began to appear already in the 1970s as a result of the ambitions of university faculties, and the newly established research support branch of the ministry of education. Alongside with this, some last efforts of the Communist science management allocated specific resources to foster university research (see the effects of these in psychology C. . After 1990, several national and international efforts were specifically introduced to increase university research. In psychology, this mainly facilitated initiating international cooperations and improved digitized technologies, both in teaching and research laboratories, gradually allowing fast internet access as well.

| Formation of a national competitive grant system
Hungary as all Eastern European countries between 1950 and the 1970s was entirely characterized by a centralized planning system even of scientific research that supported institutions rather than individuals or projects. The and Disturbances of Social Adaptation grants (C. . This entailed more options for university based research. By 1989, the centralized research spending was gradually decreased and the role of open grants and thematic grants, later many times tied to EU accession or EU programs was basically equalized. A central role was played in this process by the OTKA national research grant system (see about its ESF evaluation in OTKA, 2014). Psychology had a good success rate in this scheme, but with shaky administrative positions. It was usually aligned with education, but some of its chapters aligned with neuroscience. During the last 10 years, the Orbán government's R and D and I (innovation) policy favors innovation and applied research in all domains, with a less certain position of curiosity driven basic research. Parallel to this, governmental resource allocation moves back towards centralization and towards special thematic calls (National Innovation Office, 2013). Thus, in a particular manner, in the middle of efficiency and competition managerial rhetoric, a recentralization takes place in research resource allocation similar to what happens in university governance (see NKFI WEBsite). The multiplicity of international contacts also resulted many movements of migration, partly due to the attraction of foreign cognitive PhD programs and universities attracting the just established young scholars abroad.

| A CASE STUDY: HUNGARIAN RESEARCH IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Unlike the Communist times, however, this time moving to the West did not mean to become alienated from the Invited keynotes present a special topic, but the poster sessions welcome presentations from cognitive psychology and cognitive science at large. In 2022, the 13th DUCOG had the lead topic of Cognitive and Functional Perspectives on Emotions.
Hungarian cognitive researchers as part of their success, obtained many notable research grants from outside Hungary. As co-PIs they took part in several NSF grants. During the last 5 years they obtained 5 ERC grants. The excellence of the CEU department is shown by the fact that all of these grants were obtained by them in a very competitive system, while no other Hungarian cognitive group was successful. This very sadly shows that the government enforced relocation of Central European University to Vienna shall have a very detrimental effect on level and organization of Hungarian cognitive research (see CEU under WEBsites).

| SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK
In short, Hungarian psychology from 1990 showed a continuous Westernization and internationalization. This was true in university teaching, in the increasing sophistication and international reputation of research, and the social acceptance of psychology as a leading social science. During the last 10 years, there are some tension in this continuous development. The underfinancing of the university system, the increasing teaching load, and the managerial concentration on applied research are not specific to Hungary and to psychology. Most of the recent Hungarian tensions are similar to events happening over university management and the fate of curiosity driven research in most of the Western world. The particular Hungarian feature is, however, the dislike and even persecution of liberal ideas and institutions by the Orbán goverment. That is creating specific threats to psychology a science and profession that is mostly aligned with liberal social philosophy and certainly with the primacy of individualism on the ideological level.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.