Sándor Ferenczi (7 July 1873 – 22 May 1933) was a Hungarian

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

Biography

Born Sándor Fränkel to Baruch Fränkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, both

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...

, he later magyarized his surname to Ferenczi. As a result of his psychiatric work, he came to believe that his patients' accounts of sexual abuse as children were truthful, having verified those accounts through other patients in the same family. This was a major reason for his eventual disputes with Sigmund Freud. Prior to this conclusion he was notable as a psychoanalyst for working with the most difficult of patients and for developing a theory of more active intervention than is usual for psychoanalytic practice. During the early 1920s, criticizing Freud's "classical" method of neutral interpretation, Ferenczi collaborated with

Otto Rank Otto Rank (; ; né Rosenfeld; 22 April 1884 – 31 October 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, ...

to create a "here-and-now" psychotherapy that, through Rank's personal influence, led the American

Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist and among the founders of the humanistic approach (and client-centered approach) in psychology. Rogers is widely considered one of the founding fathers of ps ...

to conceptualize person-centered therapy (Kramer 1995). Ferenczi has found some favour in modern times among the followers of

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...

as well as among relational psychoanalysts in the United States. Relational analysts read Ferenczi as anticipating their own clinical emphasis on mutuality (

intimacy An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate relationship is commonly a sexual relationship, it may also be a non-sexual relationship involving family, friends, or ...

intersubjectivity In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives. Definition is a term coined by social scientists to refer to a variety of types of human interac ...

, and the importance of the analyst's

countertransference Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...

. Ferenczi's work has strongly influenced theory and praxis of the interpersonal-relational theory of American psychoanalysis, as typified by psychoanalysts at the

William Alanson White Institute The William Alanson White Institute (WAWI), founded in 1943, is an institution for training psychoanalysts and psychotherapists which also offers general psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. It is located in New York City, United States, on the Uppe ...

. Ferenczi was president of the

International Psychoanalytical Association The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, from an idea proposed by Sándor Ferenczi. His ...

from 1918 to 1919.

Ernest Jones Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first En ...

, a biographer of Freud, termed Ferenczi as "mentally ill" at the end of his life, famously ignoring Ferenczi's struggle with

pernicious anemia Pernicious anemia is a type of vitamin B12 deficiency anemia, a disease in which not enough red blood cells are produced due to the malabsorption of vitamin B12. Malabsorption in pernicious anemia results from the lack or loss of intrinsic ...

, which killed him in 1933. Though desperately ill with the then-untreatable disease, Ferenczi managed to deliver his most famous paper, "Confusion of Tongues" to the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, on 4 September 1932. Ferenczi's reputation was revived in 2002 by publication of ''Disappearing and Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis''. One of the book's chapters dealt with the nature of the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi.

Ferenczi's main ideas

Activity in psychoanalytic therapy

Contrary to Freud's opinion of therapeutic

abstinence Abstinence is a self-enforced restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, but it can also mean abstinence from alcohol, drugs, food, etc. ...

, Ferenczi advocated a more active role for the analyst. For example, instead of the relative "passivity" of a listening analyst encouraging the patient to freely associate, Ferenczi used to curtail certain responses, verbal and non-verbal alike, on the part of the analysand so as to allow suppressed thoughts and feelings to emerge. described in a case study how he used a kind of behavioral activation (uncommon in the psychoanalytic therapy at that time) when he asked an opera singer with performance anxiety to “perform” during a therapy session and in this way to struggle with her fears .

Clinical empathy in psychoanalysis

Ferenczi believed the empathic response during therapy was the basis of clinical interaction. He based his intervention on responding to the subjective experience of the analysand. If the more traditional opinion was that the analyst had the role of a physician, administering a treatment to the patient based upon diagnostic judgment of psychopathology, Ferenczi wanted the analysand to become a co-participant in an encounter created by the therapeutic dyad. This emphasis on empathic reciprocity during the therapeutic encounter was an important contribution to the evolution of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi also believed that self-disclosure of the analyst is an important therapeutic reparative force. The practice of including the therapist's personality in therapy resulted in the development of the idea of mutual encounter: the therapist is allowed to discuss some content from his/her own life and thoughts, as long as it is relevant to the therapy. This is in contrast to the Freudian therapeutic abstinence according to which the therapist should not involve his/her personal life with the therapy, and should remain neutral (ibid.). The mutual encounter is a precedent for the psychoanalytic theory of two-person psychology.

The "confusion of tongues" theory of trauma

Ferenczi believed that the persistent traumatic effect of chronic overstimulation, deprivation, or empathic failure (a term further elaborated by

Heinz Kohut Heinz Kohut (3 May 1913 – 8 October 1981) was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of self psychology, an influential school of thought within psychodynamic/ psychoanalytic theory which helped transform the mod ...

) during childhood is what causes neurotic, character, borderline and psychotic disorders (ibid.). According to this concept, trauma develops as a result of the sexual seduction of a child by a parent or authority figure. The confusion of tongues occurs when the child pretends to be the spouse of the parent. The pathological adult interprets this infantile and innocent game according to his adult "passion tongue" and then forces the child to conform to his passion tongue. The adult uses a tongue the child does not know, and interprets the child's innocent game (his infantile tongue) according to his disturbed perspective. For example, a father is playing with his little girl. During their common game, she offers him the role of her husband and wants him to sleep with her just as he sleeps with her mother. The pathological father misinterprets this childish offer, and touches his daughter in an inappropriate manner while they are in bed together. Here, the child spoke her innocent childish tongue, and the father interpreted her offer with his passionate adult sexual tongue. The adult also attempts to convince the child that the lust on his part is really the love for which the child yearns. Ferenczi generalized the idea of trauma to emotional neglect, physical maltreatment, and empathic failure. The prominent manifestation of these disturbances would be the sexual abuse. A Lacanian reading of Ferenczi's 'Confusion of Tongues' was published in 2018 by Miguel Gutiérrez-Peláez. Raluca Soreanu has investigated the metapsychological implications of 'Confusion of Tongues' the ''Clinical Diary'' for a theory of psychic splitting. Freud and other psychoanalysts 1922

''Regressus ad uterum''

In ''Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality'' (german: Versuch einer Genitaltheorie, 1924), Ferenczi suggested that the wish to return to the womb ( la, regressus ad uterum) and the comfort of its amniotic fluids symbolizes a wish to return to the origin of life, the sea. This idea of an "uterine and thalassal regression" became a feature of the so-called Budapest School, up to the disciple

Michael Balint , , image = Monte Verità Gedenktafel Michael Balint 1K4A4638-b.jpg , caption = , birth_name = Mihály Maurice Bergsmann , birth_date = , birth_place = Budapest , death_date = , death_place = London , occupation = psychoan ...

and his 1937 paper on "Primary bject-ove". According to Ferenczi, all forms of human practice, especially sex, were an attempt to reestablish genitalia with the intrauterine experience – a theory which resonated with architect

Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( ; April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. H ...

and may have inspired, or supplemented, Neutra's fascination with uterine suspension. At the same time, ''Thalassa'' is embedded in discourses of popular biology, which are reinterpreted by Ferenczi by using psychoanalytic models. Far from simply leaning on

Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new s ...

Wilhelm Bölsche Wilhelm Bölsche (2 January 1861 – 31 August 1939) was a German author, editor and publicist. He was among the early promoters of nature conservation and committed to popularizing science. Life Bölsche was born in Cologne on 2 January 186 ...

, and post-

Lamarckism Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

to bolster the psychoanalytic paradigm, Ferenczi defamiliarizes these popular discourses just at a time when they were starting to inform eugenicist projects.

References

External links

Ferenczi Institute

Biography
at the Sándor Ferenczi Society, Budapest

Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, article written by Judith E. Vida {{DEFAULTSORT:Ferenczi, Sandor 1873 births 1933 deaths People from Miskolc 19th-century Hungarian people 20th-century Hungarian people Hungarian Jews Hungarian psychiatrists Hungarian psychotherapists Hungarian psychoanalysts Jewish psychiatrists Jewish psychoanalysts Analysands of Sigmund Freud University of Vienna alumni Members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society