Ferenczi's "Teratoma": A Result,not a Process

In Martin Stanton's 1990 monograph Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention , one of six exegetical chapters was titled "Teratoma", using Ferenczi's own word for malformations of (psychic) development. Since then, there has been a tendency in the larger Ferenczi literature to use "teratoma" as a metaphor, leading to the creation of many odd readings and contexts for this very specific, medical, anatomic term. When Stanton becomes expansive in viewing the teratoma as a "transitional object" which "negotiates a relationship between the growth of ideal-ego ideas in oneself and the outside 'influence' of inner systems of thought" (p. 176), he is entering the play-space that opened between Ferenczi and Groddeck during the 20s as Ferenczi's relationship with Freud became increasingly constricted. What this misses is that Ferenczi was a physician, as was Groddeck. For all their fanciful explorations of mind and body relatedness, for both Ferenczi and Groddeck there would be a shared background of certain basic terminology. In that medical terminology, "teratoma" refers to variable numbers of primordial germ cells in the embryo, which in the course of development become displaced, sequestered and grotesquely overgrown; they can never become the tissues they were meant to be. Their potential is forever squandered. "Monsters" they may be; "doubles" they may seem; but they are utterly non-viable. In his metaphorical application of the term "teratoma" to the natural history of (psychic) trauma, Ferenczi proposes a biological and psychological isomorphism that is both clinically illuminating and intuitively prophetic of the course of treatment of trauma, which he was discovering. Clinical and literary material are used to explore the gap between the anatomic teratoma and the psychic teratoma.     

Fresh old news from Ferenczi about the function of dreams: The dream as a Kur,as a treatment and as a Gyógyászat

This article discusses a text on the function of dreams and their relation to trauma. Ferenczi intended to present this material as a talk at the 12th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, which was to take place in Interlaken, Switzerland the same year that he wrote it (1931). The entire conference, however, was postponed, and parts of this communication’s content appeared in other texts in which Ferenczi rethinks the concept of trauma and its clinical significance. In the present article the author makes use of the Freud/Ferenczi correspondence to contextualize Freud’s Hungarian follower’s originality regarding his theorizations about different aspects of the function of dreams. In the 1931 speech, as well as in this article, Ferenczi used a patient’s dream work as a clinical example of a process in which traumatic experiences and unmastered sensory impressions can be repeated to achieve a better working‐through for the dreamer. The process Ferenczi describes resembles an effort of self‐treatment, of self‐Kur.     

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.     

Important dates in the life of Erich Fromm

Sándor Ferenczi's first paper (1908) on the subject of premature ejaculation - in its stress on the repercussions of the symptom itself in the other (in this case, the woman), rather than its unconscious significance or the patient's pathology - is an early signal of the ethical directions his future clinical work would take. Ferenczi - displaying a decidedly relational, not merely intrapsychic, orientation - underlines the peculiar idiosyncrasies of each partner in the couple and also the fact that any relationship worthy of the name must take place in conditions of mutual pleasure and advantage. In particular, Ferenczi strikes a blow for the ''legitimate'' needs of the weaker partner to whom the stronger must allow and offer mental space and voice by virtue of his knowledge and power. For the above reasons this first paper is a ''calling card'' which announces Ferenczi's later reflections on the specific affective qualities that may render the psychoanalytic environment non-traumatic, as well as his criticism of the narcissistic aspects of the analyst (one of the most important motives for subtle and hidden trauma), who views the work of interpretation as the product of a single mind (in my terms: a kind of colonisation and expropriation of the other) rather than as fruit of an encounter that would take into account both the unique characteristics of the partner as well as the rhythms appropriate to such a relationship.     

The brunhilde fantasy freud's countertransference in the analysis of elma

Abstract

The authors start from the hypothesis that there existed a “blind-spot” in Freud's countertransference in his analysis of Elma, an ex-patient of Sandor Ferenczi. In their search for support for this idea, they review the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi contemporary to Elma's treatment in addition to works by Freud on theory and technique. They believe to have found therein several facts which support the above idea: for instance, the diagnosis of “dementia praecox” that Freud formulated in his first interview with the patient; and some of the vicissitudes of the treatment, in particular, the circumstances which determined its termination. The Brunhilde fantasy, which Freud attributes to Elma in a letter to Ferenczi, enables them to penetrate further the possible relationship between this “blind-spot” and details of Freud's life and childhood as revealed in his self-analysis.     

The Failure of Clara Thompson’s Ferenczian (Proxy) Analysis of Harry Stack Sullivan*

After hearing Ferenczi’s talks on theory and practice in New York in 1926, psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan urged his friend and colleague Clara Thompson to get analyzed by Ferenczi so they could learn his technique. After saving for 2 years Thompson was a patient of Ferenczi for three summers and then moved to Budapest full-time for analysis until Ferenczi’s death. Two years after she returned to New York she attempted to analyze Sullivan. Analysis was broken off in anger by Sullivan after 14 months. Before the promised Ferenczian analysis began Thompson discovered Wilhelm Reich’s Character Analysis (1933) and she tried an aggressive attack on character with Sullivan rather than Ferenczian trauma-oriented “relaxation” and “neocathartic” therapy. Sullivan could not tolerate this. Because of their own unhealed trauma both individually and in relation to each other, neither Thompson nor Sullivan was able to advance Ferenczi’s views on trauma or its healing in America.     

Ferenczi and Freud – From psychoanalysis as a “professional and personal home” to the creation of a “psychoanalytic home” for the patient1

Abstract

The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a “professional and personal home” that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar “psychoanalytic home.” As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.     

A controversy between Freud and Ferenczi and beyond

Abstract

With the aid of passages of Ferenczi's paper on elasticity, and of the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, the author points out the conceptual difference between Freud and Ferenczi, evokes the historical roots of this difference, and highlights its continuing importance in present-day psychoanalysis.     

An extract of the analysis of the Monkey Puzzle Boy

Abstract

A client who wants his story to be made into a case history presents for psychoanalysis. An artist all his adult life, he expresses his sexual trauma through his art. His more recent artistic output is in the form of avant-garde video montages. The analysis stalls, becalmed by a failure to understand a circumcision event, a punishment for sexual expression. If Ferenczi and the Budapest school model learning from therapeutic errors, freedom of thought, sincerity, and experimentation, then this case history illustrates those. Real sexual trauma and a real circumcision event are entangled with fantasy and art in attempts to come to terms with them. The circumcision event was better understood with multiple readings of Carlo Bonomi’s work, which became part of the analysis. The wider Ferenczi community also became part of the story of the analysis, and in a kind of mutuality the analysis wants to make a contribution to that body of knowledge.     

Turn of Fortune in Psychoanalysis: The 1924 Rank Debates and the Origins of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis

The history of psychoanalysis can be characterized by conflicts that besides their personal content meant a closure and an opening in the development of the theorecial and practical (self )understanding of the discipline. The 1923-24 conflict that resulted in the separation of Rank from the movement and showed the first signs of uneasiness against the mainstream of psychoanalysis in Ferenczi's approach is relatively less known. However, its theoretical, or more general: discoursive impact on psychoanalysis was enormous.The debate took place among the top leaders of the movement, Rank and Ferenczi on one side, Jones, Abraham, Sachs on the other. In the center of the discussion there were two books, The Trauma of Birth by Rank and the The Development of Psychoanalysis by Ferenczi and Rank. With the help of documents I try to show that Freud first supported his Vienna-Budapest friends, later changed over to the other camp. As a general effect, I suggest that this debate resulted in the withdrawal from the earlier more hermeneutic-dialogical, therapy centered psychoanalysis toward a medical, objective, systematic and metapsychology oriented discipline. Besides the general theoretical change the power centers of psychoanalysis shifted toward West, Vienna and Budapest was substituted first by Berlin, later by London and New York.     

Identification with the Aggressor—An Interactive Tactic or an Intrapsychic Tomb?: Commentary on Paper by Jay Frankel

In Ferenczi's idea of identification with an aggressor we can distinguish two sides. One is what we might call an interactive tactic or a social strategy, which is used in upsetting or unbalanced relations of power in order to forestall lack of control, fear, and the like. This is the side that is explored in great detail by Jay Frankel. The other side consists in a intrapsychic change, which flows from severe trauma. The specific effects of the latter are described by Ferenczi as dissociation/fragmentation of the personality, sequestering of the trauma, emotional abandonment, and isolation. Elsewhere, Ferenczi refers to this as a form of psychic self-mutilation.     

‘If I leave home,who will take care of mum?’ Intergenerational transmission of parental trauma through projective identification

Using the construct of projective identification and integrating it with the body of literature on intergenerational transmission of unsymbolized parental trauma, I describe the case of an adult daughter that illustrates intergenerational transmission of unsymbolized parental trauma. It is suggested that the daughter has unconsciously identified with the disavowed feelings of anxiety projected into her by her mother. The daughter’s projective identification of her mother’s unresolved past traumas prevent her from leaving the parental home for the first time, despite being 35 years old. In turn, it is thought that the mother’s unconscious grasping onto her daughter is an attempt to avoid the confrontation of her own unprocessed fears implanted into her by her own mother, thus linking three generations of disavowal. As a way of extending the exiting theory, it is proposed that when there are long-term and inexplicable experiences of anxiety that coalesces around the intergenerational transmission of parental trauma, the term ‘intergenerational transmission of traumatic anxiety’ can be used to describe it.     

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.     

The Psychoanalysis Between Sándor Ferenczi and Elizabeth Severn: Mutuality,Unconscious Communication,and the Development of Countertransference Analysis

ABSTRACT

The psychoanalysis between Sándor Ferenczi and Elizabeth Severn was characterized by a controversial counterference analysis, in which the analysand, Severn, took an active lead. She can be seen as the co-creator of the Countertransference Analysis. In the two-person analytic dialogue that Severn and Ferenczi created to resolve the intractable therapeutic impasse in their analytic relationship, a dialogue of the unconscious emerged. Severn believed she was attuned to Ferenczi’s unanalyzed countertransference reaction to her. They had a special kind of relationship where attunement was at an unconscious level. In a sustained analytic encounter, she helped Ferenczi retrieve the experience of being sexually abused, which was the unconscious derivation of his negative countertransference to Severn.     

The Strength of "Creative Impulse" in the Aftermath of Trauma Discussion of 'I Made a Picture of My Life—a Life from the Picture' by Pirkko Siltala

Abstract

The author presents aspects of the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi, and between the members of Freud's inner circle as it appears in their correspondence, to illustrate the correspondences as well as the non-correspondences and conflicts which arose among them.     

Building Blocks Toward Contemporary Trauma Theory: Ferenczi 's Paradigm Shift

In laying down the building blocks of contemporary trauma theory, Ferenczi asserted that trauma is founded on real events and that it occurs in the interpersonal and intersubjective dynamics of object relations. He stressed the significance of the presence or lack of a trusted person in the post-traumatic situation. After the trauma, the loneliness and later the isolation of the victim represent a serious pathogenic source. In the traumatic situation, the victim and the persecutor/aggressor operate differing ego defense mechanisms. Ferenczi was the first to describe the ego defense mechanism of identification with the aggressor. Ferenczi pointed out the characteristic features of the role of analyst/therapist with which (s)he may assist the patient in working through the trauma, among them being the development of a therapeutic atmosphere based on trust, so that the traumatic experiences can be relived, without which effective therapeutic change cannot be achieved. For the analyst, countertransference, as part of authentic communication, is incorporated into the therapeutic process. These are the key building blocks that are laid down by Ferenczi in his writings and appear in later works on trauma theory.     

LACAN AND FERENCZI: PARADOXICAL KINSHIP?

The kinship between Ferenczi and Lacan can be compared with the phases of an eclipse. Throughout the first period of his teaching, Lacan presents Ferenczi as the most relevant analyst among the first pioneers. It is clear that he hopes to develop Ferenczi’s subversive reflections about clinical practice. Surprisingly, in the second period references to Ferenczi seem to disappear, even when he takes on the question of trauma in light of what he calls the register of the Real; he does not cite Ferenczi at all. In a third period, after Lacan’s death, certain Lacanians are very critical about Ferenczi, often excessively. Today, analysts open to Lacan’s teaching are discovering Ferenczi and the richness of his work, in which Lacan found numerous springheads for his own work.     

Secondary traumatization among former prisoners of wars' adult children: the mediating role of parental bonding

Background and Objectives: The aversive impact of combat and parents' combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on young children has been examined in a few studies. However, the long-term toll of war captivity on secondary traumatization (ST) and the parental bonding of adult children remain unknown. This study examined ST symptoms and parental bonding among adult children of former prisoners of war (ex-POWs' children) that were compared to adult children of comparable veterans (controls' children). Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of parental bonding and exposure to stress in the association between group and ST symptoms. Design: A correlative, cross-sectional study. Methods: Participants were Israeli ex-POWs' children (N = 98) and controls' children (N = 90), whose fathers fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. All participants completed a battery of self-reported questionnaires. Results: Ex-POWs' children reported a higher number of ST symptoms and lower levels of fathers' care, as compared to controls' children. Importantly, exposure to stress stemming from fathers' behaviors and fathers' care was found to mediate the association between research group and ST. Conclusions: Forty years after the war ended, the experience of living with ex-POWs is associated with ex-POWs' children psychological outcome.