The clinical revolution of the ‘wise baby’

In an historical context focused on a close examination of the complex relationship between Freud and Ferenczi, the author shows Ferenczi's contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. He describes how his ideas and his therapeutic sensitivity anticipated modern clinical thought (for example, Winnicott and Bion), especially the understanding of borderline and narcissistic pathology. The paper considers the following topics: transference and countertransference; early affectivity; the different psychic trauma; phenomena connected with dissociation; the healing factor of the analysis.     

Corrective Emotional Experience Remembered

The paper examines on the one hand the influence of the Berlin Institute in the 1920s on Franz Alexander's training and on his later work, as it was a workshop aiming to test the possibilities of a large utilization of psychoanalytic therapy in an institutional framework. On the other hand, the spirit of experimentation of Sándor Ferenczi and the endeavor to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of psychoanalysis by the use of countertransference and emotional exchange also became important for Alexander. A glimpse of recent researches on Freud's timetable gives background information with possible comparisons between Freud's technique and that of Alexander.     

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 adventurous emigration of the Ferencziana: Contribution to their history

Abstract

This article retraces the long winding path followed by important documents on and by Freud and Ferenczi, first crossing the European continent in the flames of war and other horrors, and later being hosted by several cities. Eventually, after Judith Dupont's gift of her Paris archives to the Freud Museum in London in 2013, the collection of papers donated by Enid Balint to the custody of this author and kept for two decades in Geneva was finally deposited in the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society, also in London. Some other details and anecdotes of this long trip are also evoked.     

Freud über Krankheit

The history of Freud??s illnesses shows us how he tried to circumvent the confrontation with his health disorders and consider them as unimportant. Similarly, in his personal letters, he left his ill body ??out there?? as if it were another person, Konrad, not himself. He avoids understanding it from the inside. In his correspondence, especially with Ferenczi, depressive symptoms were considered as somatic and were excluded from his reflexions. Important insights, e.g. about a relationship between cancer with hate do not change his basic attitude. Disavowel and masochism become important in his life and writings. In the post-Freudian literature these themes will be integrated in the dialogue, i.e. between analyst and analysand.     

Freud,His Illness,and Ourselves

The history of Freud's illness shows that he tried to avoid confrontation with it, and to treat it as unimportant. In his personal letters, the ill body remains outside-as another person, "Konrad," not he himself-and it is not taken into account. Particularly in Freud's correspondence with Ferenczi, we realize to what extent certain phenomena, especially depressive ones, he considered somatic, with a tendency to dismiss them, and this despite important occasional insights, such as about the role played by hate in psychosomatic illnesses. In the post-Freudian development, these topics have been more and more integrated in the dialogue, in the discourse between the analyst and the analysand.     

Mutuality*

Ferenczi’s striving for mutuality, a call which Freud didn’t take up, let him explore this concept with his analysands. He thus became the originator of mutual analysis, although with caveats, and of the concept of introjection, another important Ferenczian notion. The analyst’s attitude of knowing the ‘objective’ and independent Truth is changing its orientation into that of a co-construction in the analytic work; here the analyst and the analysand build a third internal world, which they share and which remains their own. Clinical vignettes illustrate the implications of these views.