Sándor Ferenczi's Ideas and Methods and Their Relevance to Group Psychotherapy

Over the last 20years, I have been attempting to translate Ferenczi's significant discoveries into contemporary clinical practice. There are five basic Ferenczian concepts upon which I have elaborated a contemporary version, relevant for the conduct of an analytic group. The presentation of group interaction illustrates these five dimensions: 1. Confusion of Tongues Theory and Trauma; 2. Compassionate Confrontation; 3. Judicious Self-Disclosure; 4. Reparative Therapeutic Experiences; and 5. Group as Therapist to the Group Analyst.     

Transference and Countertransference in Sándor Ferenczi's <Emphasis Type="Italic">Clinical Diary</Emphasis>

This paper examines Ferenczi's contributions to the concepts of transference and countertransference, especially in the Clinical Diary, and the weight of these ideas in our present-day clinical work. Specifically emphasized are the circulation of archaic communication within the session, and the denial of countertransference as a re-traumatazing agent, shown in a clinical vignette.     

Sándor Ferenczi: From Clinical Turmoil to Theoretical Articulations

The article deals with concepts proposed by Sándor Ferenczi: confusion of tongues, disavowal and progressive trauma, illustrated by a clinical example, in which excessive life experiences deeply determined the psychic construction, compromising the integrity of the self-image and the potentiality of egoic capacities. We attempt to understand the uniqueness of the patient's history, and the ethical practice of deep analytic listening.     

“Yours,Thirsty for Honesty,Ferenczi”: Some Background to Sándor Ferenczi's Pursuit of Mutuality

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Sándor Ferenczi und der Institutionskonflikt der Psychoanalyse

By the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association by Freud, Jung and Ferenczi the “psychoanalytic movement” joined into regulated tracks. Thus, the project “Psychoanalysis”, a project in the spirit of the “Aufklärung”, which had prescribed itself to individualistic autonomy, got into breach. In this contribution the reasons are reflected in regard to the establishment as non-university science and the threat of marginalization. They objected Freud’s pretension of influence and belonging. It is unclear why it was explicitly Sándor Ferenczi who was designated to be the precursor of that foundation. He was initially a critical opponent of Freud’s thoughts. His biography illustrates that the institutionalization of psychoanalysis happened too early and that this brought scientific isolation and personal distress over his life when, at the end of his life, he strived for emanzipation in his relationship to Freud.     

Sándor Ferenczi,A Classical and Contemporary Psychoanalyst

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The article intends to show how&nbsp;Ferenczi is a genuine precursor for many of the themes which lie at the center of the current psychoanalytic...     

The clinical language of Sándor Ferenczi: Introductory and methodological considerations

Abstract

Reflecting in the present paper on the legitimacy of a work to collect together the ideas, concepts, and terms of Sándor Ferenczi, the author will explore, through a series of questions and answers, the following points: why it is so clear-cut that Ferenczi should be included in the company of those great psychoanalytic authors who might be deemed entitled to such a study; whether Ferenczi possessed his own language, and if this was the case, when and how he acquired it; what we mean when we refer to Ferenczi’s idiomatic language, and how we can profitably identify this language and bring it into focus; how, in practice, such a text should be organized; what its audience and function would be; and how it would be used by readers and students of Ferenczi.     

Splitting,fragmenting, and mental agony: the clinical thinking of Sándor Ferenczi

Following a thorough study of the Clinical Diary (1932), the author aims to put forward Sándor Ferenczi's theoretical discoveries, which allow him to settle a very advanced clinical consideration. The main parameters of this consideration foreshadow those that, in the following decades, were to be at the centre of some of the most significant developments in psychoanalysis, in particular those of M. Klein, W. R. Bion and D. W. Winnicott.     

Supervision as oversight: A new era in the history of psychoanalytic practice and training?

Taking its cue from Ekstein's analysis of the history of supervision (1960), this article proposes that there is a new historical era emerging in Britain, a phase that could be characterised as the ‘regulatory phase’. It is argued that in the future the clinical supervisor of psychoanalytic work will be positioned as ‘overseer’, with the consequence that what might be overlooked/not seen in the new regulatory climate is the notion of a psychoanalytically informed practice as a practice of the questioning of knowledge and its effects. Further, it considers how the effect of the proposed regulatory framework for psy-practice in the UK elides the current distinction between ‘practitioner/analyst’ and ‘trainee/candidate’. Thus psychoanalytically informed practitioners are re-positioned as candidates for authorisation as state licensed psy-practitioners. A clinical example, based loosely on Freud's account of his analysis of the young female homosexual, draws attention to the specifics and problematics of the competencies for analytic work and its supervision proposed by the Health Professions Council, Skills for Health and research for University College London, which envisages a future role of supervisors as the overseers of standardised interventions.     

Social Trauma and Testimony: A Reading of Maryan S. Maryan’s Notebooks Inspired by Sándor Ferenczi

The purpose of this paper is to present the relational dimension of trauma according to Sándor Ferenczi, illustrating it by using the testimonial material produced during the analysis of Maryan S. Maryan, a visual artist, survivor of Auschwitz. Furthermore, a few formulations are proposed on being witness to traumatic experiences in psychoanalytic practice, as well as what can be considered as ethics and politics in psychoanalysis when facing situations of social trauma and violence.

     

Why Ferenczi today? The contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to the understanding and healing of psychic suffering

A society undergoing rapid change, which doubts its own possibilities of survival, calls into question the worth of psychoanalytical theory and practice. The author emphasizes that the Ferenczian clinical evolution could be a source of inspiration for reinvigorating our trust in the prodromes of the Freudian paradigm, and thus for relaunching the authoritativeness of our thought and our psychotherapeutic method. In this light the author examines the affective and cognitive qualities that render Ferenczi a mentor of our possible future development, taking into consideration the following aspects: the communicative and intersubjective perspective that denotes Ferenczi's thought since his first writings; the receptive, reflective, and self‐reflective capacities which have progressively accompanied his own commitment and clinical attitude; and his elective work on trauma and “the traumatic”, including the algogenic messages transmitted during the healing process by analysts in fear (and perhaps terror) of their own regression and countertransferential catastrophe. In particular, these last events (central in the Ferenczian vision) are today specifically stimulated by new forms of pathology which search for, with our help, a resolution of the apathetic pain and the tearing apart of the identity that characterize the suffering of patients.     

Sándor Ferenczi: A Contemporary Introduction,by Alberto Fergusson and Miguel Gutiérrez-Peláez,Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2022, 125 pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

African indigenous games: Using Bame Nsamenang’s Africentric thoughts to reflect on our heritage,pedagogy, and practice in a global village

As we go global and begin to make early childhood practices universal, certain aspects of communities remain fixed in deep realms of their everyday living and can only be accessed by those who believe in it. Believing in it requires having faith in a practice that will always be better than what others bring as “best practice”. This is because that aspect is what defines who you are and changing it amounts to removing a piece of you with the intention of replacing it with an “artificial part”. This may be the case with African indigenous games that have been played in various settings to define the Africanness of given communities. The values that these games bring to the Africans as they try to hold on to what belongs to them, is discussed in this paper. Bame Nsamenang used such thoughts to propel the Africentrism philosophy to direct thoughts into values that are African in nature, even when there are no clear boundaries of African in Africa. This article focuses on Nsamenang’s Africentric arguments in line with promotion of African indigenous games as a heritage, pedagogy, and a practice.