Ferenc Mérei

Ferenc Mérei (24 November 1909 – 23 February 1986) was a Hungarian psychologist and educator.

Born in Budapest into a bourgeois family, Mérei often spent time in his parents' photography studio at the Garay Bazaar. He did not like school, where he felt excluded and his teachers' brutality caused him much pain. He read a lot, even 4-500-page books in one sitting. His mother's liaisons with several men disturbed him.

After graduating from high school, he studied at the Sorbonne from 1928, even though his mother wanted him to study in Berlin. He specialised in political economy, statistics and literature and studied eleven languages. It was child psychology and vocational guidance that really captivated his interest. Henri Wallon received him at the university as his pupil, and directed him in studying child psychology. He joined the French Communist Party in 1930.

He gave his first scientific lecture in 1932. The lecture, in which he criticised Jean Piaget, attracted Wallon's disapproval, and it was then that Mérei developed his key idea, the essence of which is the social determination of humans.

He obtained two degrees, one from a career advising college, and one from the Sorbonne Faculty of Arts in philosophy, sociology, psychology and pedagogy. He made lifelong friends in Paris, where they and his teachers shaped his ideals and his world view.

Returning home as a fresh graduate in 1934, he could not find employment, so he worked as a psychologist without pay at the Állami Gyermeklélektani Intézet (State Children's Psychological Institute), founded by János Schnell) until 1938. He was the first to research the social experience affecting the individual and the social role of the formation of rules and norms. He published two theses in 1937: Child playing with buttons and The country-building child.

Between 1938 and 1940 he worked at the Special Education Teacher Training College, once again without a salary, so he lived on the money he received from teaching languages. He married a teacher of special education (Vera Mérei née Molnár). They learned the organisation of examinations and worked together.

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