Dr. Julia Devai who recalls her memory in The first years with András Pető: The birth of Conductive Education (OMOD 1997 pp.1-8. in Forrai J. 1999)
“On that grey November day in 1946 Pető was sitting behind his desk, leaning back on his chair. His eyes were only partly open but, while talking to somebody, he seemed to be aware of everything that was going on. He did not even look at us, only indicated the door to the next room with his head. I was eager to leave the place where nobody paid any attention to me, and happily entered the next room. There were three people inside doing different things. One of them was lying on the floor, and tried to reach the end of the carpet with his extended legs and feet. The other was sitting on a chair, attempting to lift a seemingly paralysed arm with the good one, and the third person was leaning on a chair, while bending and extending a knee along the leg of the chair. There was a slight murmur in the room, because everybody was counting slowly, according to the rhythm of the forced move. The murmur, the quiet effort and the unbelievable concentration of these people created such a great tension the room, that there was no space left for questions. I was simply drawn into their world, and before long I realised that I was unconsciously counting and sitting on one of the chairs to help to stabilise it. I wanted them to succeed, I wantedthat knee to bend and that arm to raise with such a fervour, that I hardly realised the Pető was standing in the middle of the room. He walked to every one of them, showed a better grip, turned something here, pushed a little bit there. The guy using the new trick Pető just showed him, was finally lifting his arm, and was all smiled, without interrupting our counting…From than on I was frequent visitor in his apartment…At that time only half of his patients suffered motor problems, the other half or even more had internal or dermatological diseases. His methods were somewhat unusual in Hungary, and could not be easily adapted to any traditional hospital setting. He was convinced that the essence of the “movement therapy”, which was the original name of conductive education, was a learning process, thus it seemed logical to get this new discipline accepted through the Ministry of Education[...]”
“On that grey November day in 1946 Pető was sitting behind his desk, leaning back on his chair. His eyes were only partly open but, while talking to somebody, he seemed to be aware of everything that was going on. He did not even look at us, only indicated the door to the next room with his head. I was eager to leave the place where nobody paid any attention to me, and happily entered the next room. There were three people inside doing different things. One of them was lying on the floor, and tried to reach the end of the carpet with his extended legs and feet. The other was sitting on a chair, attempting to lift a seemingly paralysed arm with the good one, and the third person was leaning on a chair, while bending and extending a knee along the leg of the chair. There was a slight murmur in the room, because everybody was counting slowly, according to the rhythm of the forced move. The murmur, the quiet effort and the unbelievable concentration of these people created such a great tension the room, that there was no space left for questions. I was simply drawn into their world, and before long I realised that I was unconsciously counting and sitting on one of the chairs to help to stabilise it. I wanted them to succeed, I wantedthat knee to bend and that arm to raise with such a fervour, that I hardly realised the Pető was standing in the middle of the room. He walked to every one of them, showed a better grip, turned something here, pushed a little bit there. The guy using the new trick Pető just showed him, was finally lifting his arm, and was all smiled, without interrupting our counting…From than on I was frequent visitor in his apartment…At that time only half of his patients suffered motor problems, the other half or even more had internal or dermatological diseases. His methods were somewhat unusual in Hungary, and could not be easily adapted to any traditional hospital setting. He was convinced that the essence of the “movement therapy”, which was the original name of conductive education, was a learning process, thus it seemed logical to get this new discipline accepted through the Ministry of Education[...]”
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