The Freud–Ferenczi controversy in light of Emma Eckstein's circumcisio

Abstract

Emma Eckstein's circumcision trauma has been powerfully suppressed, denied, and dissociated from the history of the origins of psychoanalysis. Even though Freud did not categorize it as a trauma, he was deeply impacted by it in the period when he provided psychoanalysis with his foundation. Despite Freud's intellectual erasure of the trauma that Emma experienced, her “cut” never ceased to unconsciously break through Freud's fantasies and discourse, haunting the psychoanalytic building as a veritable ghost. Sándor Ferenczi became the recipient of what Freud could not consider in his own mind, and his revision of the “Bausteine” (building blocks) of psychoanalysis featured an attempt to heal the split embedded in the foundation of psychoanalysis.     

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.     

The Marcuse-Dunayevskaya dialogue, 1954–1979

Preliminary versions of this paper were presented to the Midwest Sociological Society annual meetings in 1988 and 1989. I would like to thank the discussants and the other participants in those sessions as well as the following people, who offered helpful comments on earlier drafts: Janet Afary, Nigel Gibson, Martin Jay, Douglas Kellner, Andrew Kliman, Lou Turner.     

Maternal depression and the timing of mother–child dialogue

Turn-taking in dialogue is an essential part of communication and early language experience. The prevalence of utterances and the timing of responses in dialogue were examined at 14 and 36 months of age in 104 mother–child dyads from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHSREP). Mothers varied in their level of depression risk (measured with the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale; CES-D). Although maternal utterance rate did not vary significantly across any factors, the latency of mothers' responses to their children decreased with development (12 ms/month) and was significantly related to that of their own children (i.e., slow-responding children had slow-responding mothers). Mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms were 11% slower in responding to their children than mothers with low depression risk, suggesting that the interactive timing of speech to children may be particularly sensitive to maternal depression, modifying the contingent properties of children's early language experience.     

The Environment of Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary

The author evokes the tragic death of Ferenczi’s colleague and analysand Dr. Elisabeth Radó-Révész in 1923. She died of pernicious anemia, the same illness that ended the life of Ferenczi 10 years later, at age 59. Can this be a tragic coincidence? Following notes in Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary, the author considers the deep disappointments both Ferenczi and Radó-Révész had experienced and explores some of the Tragic Man qualities of Ferenczi.     

The form of the soul ― on the body in Freud’s psychoanalysis

To formulate the problem of the relation between body and soul in terms of how one should understand the relation between consciousness and the brain, or in terms of explaining how mind can arise out of matter, is a modern and far from innocent tendency that has instigated the whole spectrum of theories and answers suggested by the philosophy of mind of the so-called Analytic tradition during the 20th century. During the last 5 decades, we have seen a number of attempts at incorporating Freud into this discussion about the relation between body and soul. In this article, the author develops an argument according to which the philosophy of mind of the Analytic tradition is not really an appropriate intellectual environment for Freud´s theory of the body and its constitutive rôle. Rather, we should turn to phenomenology and transcendental philosophy where the body is thematized, not in terms of matter taken to give rise to consciousness in an empirical sense, but rather in terms of the “lived body” that is taken, in a transcendental sense, to constitute the organization of meaning in our conscious and our unconscious psychological life. On the basis of an outline of this phenomenological theory, the author argues that Freud, most of all in his theory of psychosexual development, thematizes the body as the form of the soul.     

The Rank–Ferenczi Relationship,as Seen from France

Seen from France, where Rank's “American” work is not well known, the Rank–Ferenczi relationship does not allow to state that the two learned colleagues were the best friends. Rank met Ferenczi in 1908, but their most valuable and fruitful working relationship is limited to the 1922–1924 time period. Their working relationship must be read in light of the unique transference links of each to Freud, and in light of the tormented history of the analytic movement, especially after the First World War. The sensible reader will not forget that after the fast extinction of their short collaboration they continued their own works in their own ways, Otto Rank in Paris and in America and Sándor Ferenczi in Budapest. No more friends, nor enemies, but both, in a different style, brave and creative analysts.     

Freud’s dream of the double

While the motif of the double serves a prominent role in Freud’s writings from early on, this essay is an examination of the determinative power of the double in two key texts, texts in which specific, new sets doubles emerge for the first time in Freud’s career. Totem and Taboo features a double that manifests itself primarily in the form of ambivalence. Beyond the Pleasure Principle features a double that manifests itself primarily in the form of a very peculiar conflict that also entails complicity.     

Special Topic: Filial Piety: The Root of Morality or the Source of Corruption?

In recent years, Liu Qingping 劉清平 has published a series of articles criticizing Confucian ethics in its modern context (see various articles by Liu), which has drawn the attention of many scholars. My friends and I have debated with him and his allies on this issue (See Guo 2002, Yang Haiwen 2002, Yang Zebo 2003, 2004a, 2004b, Ding 2003, 2005a, 2005b, Gong 2004, Guo and Gong 2004, and Wen 2005). Most of the important articles in the debate are now collected in a volume I edited, A Collection of Contentions about Confucian Ethics: Focusing on the Mutual Concealment among Family Members (Guo 2005 [ed.]). In the following, I attempt to respond to some of Liu’s criticisms of Confucian ethics.     

On True Friendship and on the Anthropological Relevance of Freud’s The Future of an Illusion

In this response article to Isabelle Noth and Christoph Morgenthaler’s text on the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, the author reflects on two issues: first, Freud’s theoretical ideas on friendship and, second, his essay The Future of an Illusion as a text in which Freud abandons his general theoretical starting point, namely the analysis of the human condition, normality, and cultural and religious phenomena from the perspective of clinical anthropology.     

The disputation — a special type of cooperative argumentative dialogue

This article consists of three parts, two introductory, in which the limits and the methods of analysis of dialogues are expounded, and the major part, in which the main features of a philosophical theory of disputation are outlined.

The Primary Process: Freud’s Profound Yet Neglected Contribution to the Psychology of Consciousness

ABSTRACT

The primary process model is part of Freud’s struggle to define and distinguish conscious and unconscious mental activity. He created two embryonic models of unconscious mind. One he derived from studying symptoms of dynamic repression or sequestration of content already capable of symbolic mental representation. The other, the primary process, is his landmark effort to define a mental activity different from reflective representational thought, derived from studying dreaming. He could not clearly separate the repression model, as it is also based on the primary process. He vacillated as to whether the primary process is qualitatively different from representational symbolic thought. His efforts to articulate preconscious mentation suggest an ambiguous gray area between conscious thought and the primary process. Although he concluded that the primary process is unconscious because it is not intrinsically reflective, its manifestations are psychologically conscious and directly evident except in the physiologically unconscious state of dreaming. Similar problems color the efforts of others including Klein, Matte-Blanco, and theorists of attachment and implicit learning to separate conscious and unconscious mind and to articulate a model of mental function different from reflective consciousness. A model of conscious mental activity different from reflective representational consciousness, called primordial consciousness, is proposed to account for a wide spectrum of human phenomena both normal and pathological that share characteristics of immediacy and belief. They include, in addition to dreaming, psychosis, creativity, spirituality, and mental process in non-western cultures.     

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.     

Freud was Right… About the Origins of Abnormal Behavior

Freud's psychodynamic theory is predominantly based on case histories of patients who displayed abnormal behavior. From a scientific point of view, Freud's analyses of these cases are unacceptable because the key concepts of his theory cannot be tested empirically. However, in one respect, Freud was totally right: most forms of abnormal behavior originate in childhood. In this paper various factors are discussed that play a role in the etiology of abnormal behavior in children and adolescents. Furthermore, problems are signaled that hinder effective interventions for disordered youths.     

Early Muslim–Christian dialogue: a closer look at major themes of the theological encounter

Muslim–Christian relations are as old as Islam. Over the centuries the relationship between the two communities has sometimes been one of enmity, sometimes one of rivalry and competition. But there have also been periods of frank and fruitful dialogue and collaboration and even moments of sincere friendship, which were not overcome by conflicts. This article deals with instances of fruitful dialogue in the first four centuries of Islam when Muslims and Christians engaged in serious theological discussions. A number of factors in the early ^c Abbasid era favored such discussions, such as the cosmopolitan nature of Baghdad and its province, the caliphs' patronage of scholarship, the emergence of Arabic as a lingua franca and the deployment of dialectical reasoning (kalām). But also, quite simply, there were matters that needed debating. In this article, the author selects three major themes of the theological encounter with the intention of demonstrating how religious ideas were developed over the centuries.     

The scientific status of unconscious processes: is Freud really dead?

At regular intervals for over half a century, critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis have emerged in the popular media and in intellectual circles, usually declaring that Freud has died some new and agonizing death, and that the enterprise he created should be buried along with him like the artifacts in the tomb of an Egyptian king. Although the critiques take many forms, a central claim has long been that unconscious processes, like other psychoanalytic constructs, lack any basis in scientific research. In recent years, however, a large body of experimental research has emerged in a number of independent literatures. This work documents the most fundamental tenet of psychoanalysis--that much of mental life is unconscious, including cognitive, affective, and motivational processes. This body of research suggests some important revisions in the psychoanalytic understanding of unconscious processes, but it also points to the conclusion that, based on controlled scientific investigations alone (that is, without even considering clinical data), the repeated broadside attacks on psychoanalysis are no longer tenable.     

Ferenczi’s Ethics for Our Time: The Possibility of Being Alongside

Ferenczi’s practice and therapeutic ethics as exemplified in the Clinical Diary reveal a profound sensitivity to the questions of authority and freedom. This paper will engage with the ways in which these questions have been taken up elsewhere and have become central to post-war extensions of the psychoanalytic field, such as group analysis. A particular comparison will be made with group analytic notions of leadership and horizontal ways of relating, that is, how to be alongside one another. It will be suggested that the translatability of Ferenczi for our time reveals the adaptability of psychoanalysis to different and changing socio-political contexts.     

The Effects of Graphing a Second Observer’s Data on Judgments of Functional Relations in A–B–A–B Graphs

Collection of interobserver agreement data and reporting the results with summary statistics are standard practices in single-case research. An alternative to summary statistics is plotting the second observer’s data on the same graph as the primary observer. In this study, we evaluated whether plotting the second observer’s data differentially influenced the judgments about functional relations for A–B–A–B designs. Participants were graduate students and experts. Results suggested that (a) experts made more accurate judgments than graduate students, (b) raters made more accurate judgments for graphs with 1 rather than 2 primary data paths, and (c) raters were not influenced differentially in their judgments of functional relations by the presence or absence of the second observer’s plotted data. In addition to standard hypothesis testing, equivalence testing was performed and showed accuracy of judgments was equivalent for graphs with and without the second observers’ data being added.