The Legacy Of Sandor Ferenczi

Winner of the 2016 Gradiva Award for Edited Book The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi, first published in 1993 & edited by Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris, was one of the first books to examine Ferenczi’s invaluable contributions to psychoanalysis and his continuing influence on contemporary clinicians and scholars. Building on that pioneering work, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor brings together leading international Ferenczi scholars to report on previously unavailable data about Ferenczi and his professional descendants. Many—including Sigmund Freud himself—considered Sándor Ferenczi to be Freud’s most gifted patient and protégé. For a large part of his career, Ferenczi was almost as well known, influential, and sought after as a psychoanalyst, teacher and lecturer as Freud himself. Later, irreconcilable differences between Freud, his followers and Ferenzi meant that many of his writings were withheld from translation or otherwise stifled, and he was accused of being mentally ill and shunned. In this book, Harris and Kuchuck explore how newly discovered historical and theoretical material has returned Ferenczi to a place of theoretical legitimacy and prominence. His work continues to influence both psychoanalytic theory and practice, and covers many major contemporary psychoanalytic topics such as process, metapsychology, character structure, trauma, sexuality, and social and progressive aspects of psychoanalytic work. Among other historical and scholarly contributions, this book demonstrates the direct link between Ferenczi’s pioneering work and subsequent psychoanalytic innovations. With rich clinical vignettes, newly unearthed historical data, and contemporary theoretical explorations, it will be of great interest and use to clinicians of all theoretical stripes, as well as scholars and historians.

This book aims to present an up-to-date introduction and critical study of one of the most important psychoanalysts of all times, Sándor Ferenczi. The book presents Ferenczi as a person; his discovery of psychoanalysis and his relationship with Freud; the theoretical and clinical novelties he introduced to psychoanalysis; his deep political and social commitment, striving for the democratization of psychoanalysis; and the great relevance of his thought and perspective for the future. It also talks about his repression in the history of psychoanalysis as well as his influence in the following generations of psychoanalysts. The reader will be presented with the most relevant historical milestones and concepts, with new insights regarding some of Ferenczi’s most fundamental ideas (such as his trauma theory, his technical innovations or his developments regarding the end of analysis), as well as an informed viewpoint of his legacy, the contemporary readings of his work and the institutions and associations that continue following the path traced by l’enfant terrible of psychoanalysis. This book will be of interest both for the novel reader who has had none or scarce contact with the person and/or work of Sándor Ferenczi, as well as to the psychoanalysts, clinicians and scholars, who have a deeper contact and understanding of the work of the Hungarian analyst.

This book is an indispensable work for anyone interested in the pioneering psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi. As the supervisor of the recently published correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, Haynal brings to the present volume an elegant scholarship sensitive to Ferenczi's time and intellectual milieu. This is not solely a study in the history of psychoanalysis, in that Haynal sets himself the aim of entering into a 'dialogue' with Ferenzi, 'the founder of all relationship-based psychoanalysis and the explorer of traumatisms, counter transference and other problems present even in contemporary psychoanalysis'. Expressed in a lucid and eloquent style, each chapter explores with an intimate incisiveness, not only Ferenczi's complex and difficult relationship with Freud, but the emergence and elaboration of original ideas anticipatory of subsequent developments within the psychoanalytic movement.

Sigmund Freud's role in the history and development of psychoanalysis continues to be the standard by which others are judged. One of the most remarkable features of that history, however, is the exceptional caliber of the men and women Freud attracted as disciples and coworkers. One of the most influential, and perhaps overlooked, of them was the Hungarian analyst Sndor Ferenczi. Apart from Freud, Ferenczi is the analyst from that pioneering generation who addresses most immediately the concerns of contemporary psychoanalysts. In Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis fifteen eminent scholars and clinicians from six different countries provide a comprehensive and rigorous examination of Ferenczi's legacy. Although the contributors concur in their assessment of Ferenczi's stature, they often disagree in their judgments about his views and his place in the history of psychoanalysis. For some, he is a radically iconoclastic figure, whose greatest contributions lie in his challenge to Freudian orthodoxy; for others, he is ultimately a classical analyst, who built on Freud's foundations. Divided into three sections, Contexts and Continuities, Disciple and Dissident, and Theory and Technique, the essays in Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis invite the reader to take part in a dialogue, in which the questions are many and the answers open-ended.

This collection covers all the topics relevant for understanding the importance of Sándor Ferenczi and his influence on contemporary psychoanalysis. Pre-eminent Ferenczi scholars were solicited to contribute succint reviews of their fields of expertise. The book is divided in five sections. 'The historico-biographical' describes Ferenczi's childhood and student days, his marriage, brief analyses with Freud, his correspondences and contributions to daily press in Budapest, list of his patients' true identities, and a paper about his untimely death. 'The development of Ferenczi's ideas' reviews his ideas before his first encounter with psychoanalysis, his relationship with peers, friendship with Groddeck, emancipation from Freud, and review of the importance of his Clinical Diary. The third section reviews Ferenczi's clinical concepts and work: trauma, unwelcome child, wise baby, identification with aggressor, mutual analysis, and many others. In 'Echoes', we follow traces of Ferenczi's influence on virtually all traditions in contemporary psychoanalysis: interpersonal, independent, Kleinian, Lacanian, relational, etc.

This final volume includes "Confusion of Tongues Between Children and Adults" in which Ferenczi formulates his controversal ideas on childhood sexuality, and the conflict between the languages of tenderness and passion. First published in 1955, this book contains papers written by Ferenczi during his last years and some of his unpublished notes. It demonstrates Ferenczi's combination of great clinical understanding and an almost uncanny insight into unconscious process. Among the forty important items included are papers on the following: "Freud's Influence on Medicine", "Laughter", "Epileptic Fits", "Dirigible Dreams", "Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis", "Paranoia", "The Interpretation of Tunes Which Come into One's Head" and "The Genesis of Jus Primae Noctis".

Sándor Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn—the patient known as R.N. in the Clinical Diary—is one of the most controversial and consequential episodes in the history of psychoanalysis. In his latest groundbreaking work, Peter L. Rudnytsky draws on a trove of archival sources to provide a definitive scholarly account of this experiment, which constitutes a paradigm for relational psychoanalysis, as Freud’s self-analysis does for classical psychoanalysis. In Part 1, Rudnytsky tells the story of Severn’s life and traces the unfolding of her ideas, culminating in The Discovery of the Self. He shows how her book contains disguised case histories not only of Ferenczi and Severn herself—and thereby forms an indispensable companion volume to Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary—but also of Severn’s daughter Margaret, an internationally acclaimed dancer whose history of childhood sexual abuse uncannily replicated Severn’s own. Part 2 compares Severn to Clara Thompson and Izette de Forest as transmitters of Ferenczi’s legacy, sets the record straight about Ferenczi’s final illness, and reveals how Severn went beyond Freud and Groddeck in her capacity as Ferenczi’s analyst. Finally, in Part 3, Rudnytsky delineates the contrast between Freud and Ferenczi as men and thinkers and makes it clear why he agrees with Erich Fromm that Ferenczi’s example demonstrates how Freud’s attitude need not be that of all analysts. The first comprehensive study of Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Severn, this book is a profound reexamination of Ferenczi’s relationship to Freud and an impassioned defense of Severn and Ferenczi’s views on the nature and treatment of trauma. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, especially to relational analysts, self psychologists, and trauma theorists.

Sandor Ferenczi, Sigmund Freud's brilliant pupil as well as an innovative psychoanalyst, was silenced by various generations of his contemporaries until, in the past decades, his work began to be rediscovered. Certain aspects of his trauma theory, in fact, had never been thoroughly addressed, particularly, the connection he made between trauma and language. Miguel Gutierrez-Pelaez offers a new reading of Ferenczi by proposing a dialogue between the Hungarian psychoanalyst's work, philosophy, and contemporary psychoanalysis. Among the subjects covered, the book delves into the vulnerability of children and Ferenczi's never-ending search for a cure, the complex issue of war trauma and, more specifically, his anticipatory work in understanding the effects on the human psyche of the horrific experiences in concentration camps during World War II. These issues are raised against the backdrop of captivating figures like Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Giorgio Agamben, Derrida, Nietzsche, and Primo Levi, among others.