Sándor Ferenczi

Ferenczi, furthest right in the back row, with Sigmund Freud, Stanley G. Hall, Carl Jung, and others in front of Clark University in 1909.

Sándor Ferenczi (July 16, 1873 – May 22, 1933) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, one of Sigmund Freud’s most notable followers, famous for his humanistic approach to psychoanalysis.

Life

Sándor Ferenczi was born in Miskolc, Austria-Hungary, on July 16 1873, the eighth of twelve children. His family was of Jewish origins, and as such received great amount of antisemitic persecution. Ferenczi’s childhood and adolescence was thus rather difficult. His father owned a local bookstore, a favorite gathering place of many Hungarian Nationalists, where he secretly published material against Austrian domination. When Sándor was fifteen his father died, leaving a significant void in his son's life. Sándor created an idealistic picture of his father as a resistance hero against Habsburg’s Austria.

At the age of 24, Ferenczi received his M.D. from the University of Vienna. He served as an army doctor for several years, specializing in neurology and neuropathology. But again his Jewish origins prevented him from obtaining a well-paid job. He was hired as a physician in a hospital for the poor, working with prostitutes, criminals, and other misfortunate classes of society. This experience, however, influenced Ferenczi, leading him to advocate for change in working conditions in hospitals. His main objection was against the relationship between doctor and patient based on a vertical hierarchy. Ferenczi argued that physicians should not set themselves in a superior position above their patients, but rather that they need to “come down” among the patients, regarding and respecting their patients’ opinions.

On February 2, 1908 Ferenczi met Freud, a friendship that would last for 25 years. Ferenczi became a member of Freud’s “inner circle” of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Their extensive correspondence is collected in the three-volume The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi (1993, 1996, 2000).

In 1913, Ferenczi founded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society, and in 1919 became a full-time professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Budapest. By the end of his career, Ferenczi drifted away from the mainstream of psychoanalytical theory, resulting in a break with Sigmund Freud. He helped found the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, and served as a president of the International Psychoanalytic Society.

Ferenczi died in 1933. He suffered from the deleterious effects of pernicious anemia, which, it was speculated, was enhanced by some mental problems he developed by the end of his life. He was married to an older woman, with whom he had no children.

Work

Ferenczi was one of Freud’s most favorable disciples. Ferenczi was dedicated to his work and to psychoanalisis. However, he eventualy started to criticize some methods in psychoanalisis. He objected that psychoanalysis is overly intellectual, and that therapist needs instead to be affectionate and empathic. That attacked the core of psychoalalitical method, which always regarded therapists in subject position toward patients. Freud warned Ferenczi that being affectionate toward patients could lead to sexual affairs between patients and therapists. Ferenczi believed that it was possible, and even necessary, to create a genuine, affectionate relationship between a therapist and a patient, in order for patient to open up and healing to take place.

Ferenczi tried to improve some techniques used in psychoanalysis. He believed that the technique of free associations can be more effective if patients constrain from sex and other pleasurable activities before therapy, due to those activities weakened libido (emotional energy), which could not express fully during therapy. His idea proved counterproductive, for some patients expressed intense hostility due to tenseness and sexual frustration, and Ferenczi abandoned it.

In 1924 Ferenczi, together with Otto Rank, published The Development of Psychoanalysis, in which he suggests that in treatment of neurotic patients it is not necessary for patients to recollect every traumatic memories and then modify it, but that there are other methods to reach the same goal. In his work Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality from 1924, Ferenczi suggests that the patient’s wish to return to the comfort of the womb symbolizes their wish to return to the origin of life – the sea. Both ideas received serious criticism from psychoanalysts, causing the drift between Freud and Ferenczi open up.

Ferenczi is remembered for his work in the treatment of child abuse. In his 1932 paper Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child, Ferenczi argues that abuse can be both physical and psychological, where the two are often intertwined. Patients’ memories of sexual abuse were not only instinct-driven fantasies, as Freud believed, but are often real memories of real traumatic events (often sexual in nature). Abuse can lead to identification with the aggressor, where the child becomes attuned with the aggressor and wants to help alleviate aggressor’s suffering. When in therapy, child transfers those feelings to the therapist, wanting unconditionally to please therapist. According to Ferenczi, therapist is often unaware of this dynamics. Ferenczi thus recommends a loving and permissive atmosphere during therapy, through which therapist counterbalances the rejection and abuse from the side of parents. Ferenczi even suggested that a therapist needs to openly express his affection toward patient, encouraging patient to act out his childhood experiences. This technique was rejected by Freud’s followers.

Legacy

Ferenczi has influenced many subsequent psychotherapists. His traces can be found in the works of Melanie Klein (in her interpersonal dynamics between mother and infant), Clara Thompson (her interpersonal approach to psychotherapy) and Michael Balint (in his idea of “primary object love”). Ferenczi’s influence can be seen in some modern times French psychoanalists, like Jacques Lacan, as well as in “relational” psychoanalists in the United States.

Ferenczi’s emphasis on loving and genuine relationship between therapist and patient put him as one of the early pioneers of humanistic psychology. His emphasis that therapist need to use not only intellect but also his heart and libido testifies in that direction. It could be argued thus that Ferenczi was a predecessor of such psychologists as Eric Fromm and Carl Rogers.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Balint, Michael. 1949. Sandor Ferenczi, obituary 1933. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 30, 215-219.
• Harris, Adrienne & Aron, Lewis (eds.). 1996. Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi. Analytic Press. ISBN 0881631493.
• Keve, Tom. 2000. Triad: the physicists, the analysts, the kabbalists, London: Rosenberger & Krausz, ISBN 0953621901 (http://www.rosenbergerandkrausz.com/)
• Rudnytsky, Peter L. 2000. Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis. New York University Press. ISBN 0814775454
• Stanton, Martin. 1991. Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention. Jason Aronson Publishers, ISBN 0876685696

Bibliography

• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1920. General theory of the neuroses. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1, 294-315.
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1923. Social considerations in some analyses. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 4:475-478.
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1925. Psycho-analysis of sexual habits. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 6, 372-404.
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1931. Child-analysis in the analysis of adults. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 12, 468-482
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1932. Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child. International Journal of Psychoanalysis
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1949. Psychoanalysis and education. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 30, 220-224.
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1963. Spiritism. Psychoanalytical Review. 50, 139-144.
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1989. Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality. H. Karnac Books, Limited. (original published 1934). ISBN 0946439613
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1994. Final Contributions to the Problems & Methods of Psycho-Analysis. H. Karnac Books. (original published 1955). ISBN 1855750872
• Ferenczi, Sandor. 1994. First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, (Ernest Jones, trans.). H. Karnac Books, Limited. (original published 1952). ISBN 1855750856
• Ferenczi, Sandor & Rank, Otto. 1986. Development of Psychoanalysis (Classics in Psychoanalysis, Monograph 4). International Universities Press. (original published 1924). ISBN 0823611973.
• Ferenczi, Sandor & Sigmund Freud. 1993. The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 1: 1908-1914. (Eva Brabant, Ed.) Belknap Press. ISBN 0674174186
• Ferenczi, Sandor & Sigmund Freud. 1996. The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2: 1914-1919. (Ernst Falzeder & Eva Brabant, Eds.). Belknap Press. ISBN 0674174194
• Ferenczi, Sandor & Sigmund Freud. 2000. The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 3: 1920-1933. (Ernst Falzeder & Eva Brabant, Eds.). Belknap Press. ISBN 0674002970

External links

• Ferenczi Institute
• Sandor Ferenczi en Psikeba Revista de Psicoanalisis y Estudios Culturales
• Esterson, Allen. 1998. Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths. History of the Human Sciences, 11, 1, 1-21.
• Myers, P. 1996. Sándor Ferenczi and Patients’ Perceptions of Analysis. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 13, 1

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