Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis

Peter L. Rudnytsky, Antal Bokay, Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, Peter L. Rudnytsky, Antal Bokay, Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN:
  9780814775455
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814776711
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Sigmund Freud's role in the history and development of psychoanalysis continues to be the standard by which others are judged. One of the most remarkable features of that history, however, is the exceptional caliber of the men and women Freud attracted as disciples and coworkers. One of the most influential, and perhaps overlooked, of them was the Hungarian analyst Sndor Ferenczi. Apart from Freud, Ferenczi is the analyst from that pioneering generation who addresses most immediately the concerns of contemporary psychoanalysts.
In Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis fifteen eminent scholars and clinicians from six different countries provide a comprehensive and rigorous examination of Ferenczi's legacy. Although the contributors concur in their assessment of Ferenczi's stature, they often disagree in their judgments about his views and his place in the history of psychoanalysis. For some, he is a radically iconoclastic figure, whose greatest contributions lie in his challenge to Freudian orthodoxy; for others, he is ultimately a classical analyst, who built on Freud's foundations. Divided into three sections, Contexts and Continuities, Disciple and Dissident, and Theory and Technique, the essays in Ferenczi's Turn in Psychoanalysis invite the reader to take part in a dialogue, in which the questions are many and the answers open-ended.

PART I

Contexts and Continuities

One

Freud and His Intellectual Environment: The Case of Sándor Ferenczi

ANDRÉ E. HAYNAL

Freud has changed our view of human relationships: our present conception of human communication—whether in larger or smaller groups, whether verbal or nonverbal—is inconceivable without the pioneering work of Freud and his circle. In opposition to the widespread image, Freud did not elaborate his thoughts on these problems alone, but beginning with the first flowering of his theory, the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), which emerged in correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess, he developed them in close contact with his circle and the friends who surrounded him. His study of human relationships, starting from his observations and his difficulties in therapeutic practice, was conducted above all with the aid of two of his collaborators, Sándor Ferenczi and Otto Rank.

The closeness of Freud’s relationship with Rank cannot be overstated. Few people today realize that the term Verleugnung (disavowal) derives from Rank (1927–28, 12), that Rank (1911) wrote an early article on narcissism, which was quoted by Freud on the first page of his “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914a, 73), and that he became for a time the author of sections in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. The thrust to clarify the problems of human relationships, which led to a remarkable advance in our understanding, was itself the result of an intense and intimate dialogue between Freud and his intellectual environment.

An earlier version of this chapter appears in Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris, eds., The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi (Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press, 1993), pp. 53–74. Copyright © by The Analytic Press, Inc. It has been presented at “Psychoanalysis and Culture: The Contributions of Sigmund Freud,” Stanford University, January 1991, and at the Fourth International Conference of the Sándor Ferenczi Society in Budapest, July 1993.

A useful point of departure for assessing the collaborative nature of Freud’s achievement is provided by a letter written by Michael Bálint on May 31, 1957, to Ernest Jones:

It is true that whenever a crisis broke out Freud invariably showed himself what he really was, a truly great man, who was always accessible and tolerant to new ideas, who was always willing to stop, think anew, even if it meant reexamining even his most basic concepts, in order to find a possibility for understanding what might be valuable in any new idea. It has never been asked whether something in Freud has or has not contributed to a critical increase of tension during the period preceding a crisis. Still less has any analyst bothered to find out what happened in the minds of those who came into conflict with Freud and what in their relationship to him and to psychoanalysis led to the exacerbation. We have been content to describe them as the villains of the piece …. Maybe Rank’s case is less suitable for this examination, but I am quite certain in Ferenczi’s case one could follow the development, which, prompted by the characters of the two protagonists, led to the tragic conflict.¹

It is generally agreed that Fliess had a significant influence on Freud’s early discoveries, although opinions differ as to its nature: for some scholars he merely played the role of a screen upon which Freud could project his ideas, whereas others see him as an intellectual partner who enabled Freud to connect the biology of his time to his literary and philosophical heritage of German Romanticism. Whatever the exact truth of the matter in the case of Fliess, the idea of Freud the Master in the company of eager students is clearly too simple.

Just how wide of the mark this image is becomes clear when we realize that Ferenczi, at the time he and Freud first met in 1909, was already a mature and well-established figure. At thirty-five years of age, his student days in Vienna were far behind him. The son of a cultivated family, he was the author of some sixty scientific works, a neuropsychiatrist who gave expert legal testimony, and a poet in his spare time—in short, a typical member of the Budapest intelligentsia. This community, as distant from provincial Hungary as New York is from the American Midwest, was composed of emigres of the various territories belonging to the monarchy: German speakers (commonly referred to as Schwaben or, more precisely, Donauschwaberi), Hungarians originating from the distant provinces (such as the multiethnic principality of Transylvania, which had remained independent for centuries), and Jews from western Poland (territory belonging to the Double Monarchy since the time of Maria Theresa). This Judeo-Hungarian intelligentsia, to which Ferenczi belonged, played an immensely important role in the transformation of the cultural life of Budapest, putting it in the same league as Vienna and Prague.

Freud’s first meeting with Ferenczi resulted in a mutual enthusiasm and a friendship that Freud was later to describe as “a community of life, thought, and interests” (January 11, 1933).² They worked side by side, their dialogue resulting in an intense exchange of ideas, in intimacy, and also in controversy. In the scientific domain, they constantly shared their thoughts and projects. Many of Ferenczi’s conceptions reappear in the works of Freud, often after a prolonged period of gestation, blended with his own ideas. Freud evidently needed such stimulating company—Fliess, Rank, Ferenczi, and for a time even Groddeck were to be situated in this context.

To these scientific links must be added personal ones, which were more complex and more profound: Freud’s hopes that his daughter Mathilde might marry Ferenczi, their voyage to America with Jung during which they analyzed each other’s dreams in a sort of “mutual analysis,” and numerous holidays together, with their attendant pleasures and difficulties. These holidays were preceded by several months of preparation, studying the Baedeker, timetables, and so on. Nor can we forget the three periods of Ferenczi’s more formal analysis with Freud in 1914 and 1916, where Ferenczi’s relationships with his future wife, Gizella, and her daughter, Elma, became important issues. Ferenczi was not satisfied and wished for a deeper understanding by Freud: this dissatisfaction is a recurrent motif in their relationship. The interactions of Ferenczi and Freud with other analysts—Jung, Rank, Jones, Groddeck, Abraham, Eitingon, Reich, etc.—also have their role to play in this contentious history of psychoanalysis.

It is worth remembering that Freud treated his patient Ida Bauer (“Dora”) from October to December 1900 and seems to have written her case history in a single burst of impassioned enthusiasm, between January 10 and 25, 1901, breaking off work on The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), which he was then writing. As we know, the publication of the Dora case gave Freud a great deal of difficulty and dragged on for five years until 1905 (Marcus 1976). In Freud’s social and professional situation it required a great deal of courage and integrity to publish what actually was the chronicle of a failure, not to mention the problems of medical discretion and professional secrecy.

Even at this early date Freud was aware of dangers inherent in the analyst’s involvement in the therapeutic process, but he nonetheless recurrently found himself becoming aroused by his own affective responses. In the correspondence with Fliess, for example, he writes on December 21, 1899, of his patient, Mr. E.: “He demonstrated the reality of my theory in my own case, providing me in a surprising reversal with the solution, which I had overlooked, to my former railroad phobia. For this piece of work I even made him the present of a picture of Oedipus and the Sphinx” (Freud and Fliess 1985, 392).

By the time of the Dora case, Freud’s experience of the forces present in analytic treatment was already considerable and his ideas on the subject were well developed. As early as 1895 he wrote of the phenomenon of transference that “this happens when the patient’s relation to the physician is disturbed, and it is the worst [ärgste] obstacle that we can come across,” but added that even so it is “the special solicitude inherent to the treatment” and we can “reckon on meeting it in every comparatively serious analysis” (Freud and Breuer 1895, 301–2; italics added), since “these drawbacks … are inseparable from our procedure” (266). After a great deal of internal struggle, he admitted to Oskar Pfister in a letter of June 5, 1910, that “transference is indeed a cross” (Freud and Pfister 1963, 39). Following the triangle formed by Breuer, Anna O., and himself, Freud was to find himself, on at least two occasions, involved in analogous situations that were even more delicate: with Sabina Spielrein and Jung (1908—9), and a few years later with Elma Pálos and Ferenczi (1911—12). The recognition of these phenomena therefore occurs not only in his clinical practice but also, it seems, in extra-analytic experiences involving other people. The correspondence between Freud and Jung (1974) and the material published concerning Sabina Spielrein (Carotenuto 1980) bear witness to this.

Gradually Freud came to place increasing emphasis on affective experiences and their repetitive character (affectionate, erotic, hostile, etc.) in the transference. To Jung he wrote on December 6, 1906, that “the cure is effected by love” (Freud and Jung 1974, 13). One month later, on January 30, 1907, in the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, we find him making a similar statement: “Our cures are cures of love” (Nunberg and Federn 1962, 101). On January 19, 1908, he wrote to Karl Abraham: “Back to technique. You are right, that was the most taxing of all to acquire, and that is why I want to spare those who follow in my footsteps part of the grind—and part of the cost” (Freud and Abraham, 1965, 24). At the psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg over Easter in 1908, Freud presented the analysis of the Rat Man (1909), speaking for almost five hours without a break, driven by the need to express himself on a subject that obviously preoccupied him. He acknowledged this need to Abraham in July 1912: “I have to recuperate from psychoanalysis by working, otherwise I should not be able to stand it” (Freud and Abraham 1965, 120); and also to Ferenczi: “I was depressed the whole time and anaesthetized myself with writing—writing—writing” (Freud and Ferenczi 1992, 325).

This suffering stems from Freud’s affective involvement in his analytic work. As he wrote to Jung on March 9, 1909: “To be slandered and scorched by the love with which we operate—such are the perils of our trade, which we are certainly not going to abandon on their account. Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse [it is necessary to sail, not to live].” Moreover, “ ‘In league with the devil and yet you fear fire?’ ” (Freud and Jung 1974, 210—11). Thus he came to write, on June 7, 1909, again to Jung, about the latter’s involvement with Sabina Spielrein:

Such experiences, though painful, are necessary and hard to avoid. Without them, we cannot really know life and what we are dealing with. I myself have never been taken so badly, but I have come very close to it a number of times and had a narrow escape. I believe that only grim necessities weighing on my work, and the fact that I was ten years older than yourself when I came to psychoanalysis, have saved me from similar experiences. But no lasting harm is done. They help us to develop the thick skin we need and to dominate “countertransference,” which is after all a permanent problem for us; they teach us to displace our own affects to best advantage. They are a “blessing in disguise.” (230–31; italicized phrases in English in original)

This 1909 letter contains Freud’s first recorded use of the term “countertransference.” It first appears in a published work a year later in “The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy” (1910). The importance of the sentiments of the analyst became increasingly clear to him. On April 7, 1909, he wrote to Abraham that it was precisely those cases in which he had the greatest personal interest that had failed, “perhaps just because of the intensity of feeling” (Freud and Abraham 1965, 63).

Some months later, in August 1909, Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung embarked on their voyage to America, where Freud gave his famous lectures on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. (Incidentally, it is from Freud himself that we know of the astonishing way in which his five Clark lectures were composed; during their regular walks, Ferenczi would sketch out a lecture, which Freud would deliver half an hour later; Freud 1933, 227.) Clearly, he was preoccupied at this time with problems that he had been seeking to clarify for years, and which now became the subject of intense discussion during the voyage.

However, the working through of these problems required a sense of perspective. Thanks to his position, simultaneously engaged in and yet distant from these theoretical difficulties, the possibility of understanding emerged in Freud and led him to the idea of the countertransference and, more generally, to consider the emotional involvement of the psychoanalyst in the treatment. He later noted that many important communications between analyst and patient take place “without passing through the Cs.,” because “the Ucs. of one human being can react upon that of another” (1915b, 194).

Freud’s interest in nonverbal means of communication during analysis likewise prompted him and Ferenczi to reexamine the mysterious regions of parapsychology and the occult. The influence of Ferenczi may have helped to revive not only Freud’s but also Jung’s interest in the occult (Jung wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject). Significantly, their trip to America ended with a detour to Berlin, where Ferenczi met with the clairvoyant Frau Seidler in order to deepen his understanding of Gedankenübertragung, a German word that can be translated as “thought transference” or “thought transmission.” Ferenczi was later to engage in further exploratory sessions with a certain Mrs. Jelinek in Budapest (November 20, 1909), with Professor Alexander Roth (November 23, 1913), and with one Professor Staudenmeier (July 3, 1912); later he asked his brother to go and see Frau Seidler (October 14, 1909; November 8, 1909). Freud, meanwhile, gave advice on the way in which these experiments should be conceived (October 11, 1909; October 22, 1909; November 10, 1909). Ferenczi also conducted experiments with his patients (August 17, 1910; November 16, 1910), with his friend and later wife Gizella Pálos (November 22, 1910), and with himself as medium (December 19, 1910). These served, as Freud wrote on August 20, 1910, “to shatter the doubts about the existence of thought transference” (Freud and Ferenczi 1992, 211). It was, of course, difficult for Freud and his colleagues to discuss these embarrassing and forbidden topics. Freud wrote to Jung on December 31, 1911, that a paper on countertransference was “sorely needed,” but added, “of course we could not publish it, we should have to circulate copies among ourselves” (Freud and Jung 1974, 476). The previous year he had remarked to Ferenczi, who was heading in the same direction concerning the occult: “I would like to request that you continue to research in secrecy for two full years and don’t come out until 1913; then, certainly, in the Jahrbuch, openly and aboveboard” (Freud and Ferenczi 1992, 240).

These reflections were to lead, from the end of 1911 through the two years and half which followed, to Freud’s publication of six papers on technique (1911, 1912a, 1912b, 1913, 1914b, 1915a), which he had considered making part of a series (in 1918 they were reprinted under the title On the Technique of Psycho-Analysis). However, Freud never completed a systematic treatise on technique—an Allgemeine Methodik der Psychoanalyse (General Methodology of Psycho-Analysis)—perhaps a sign that he saw this as an unfinished chapter in his work.³

In his technical essays, moreover, Freud limited himself to the most cautious formulations and “essentially negative advice.” As he later wrote to Ferenczi: “I thought that the most important thing was to underline what should not be done and to highlight the temptations that might put the analysis in jeopardy” (January 4, 1928). Freud addressed these papers mainly to beginners, but the broader theoretical questions were not yet resolved.

At this stage Freud and Ferenczi collaborated more than is sometimes realized. Only later, in the mid-1920s, did their views diverge in ways that were important for the evolution of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi was already proving himself to be a very fine clinician, sensitive to even the most subtle interactions that occur during treatment. His “On Transitory Symptom-Constructions during the Analysis” (1912) is noteworthy in this respect, as are his short clinical notes, “To Whom Does One Relate One’s Dreams?” (1913), “A Little Chanticleer” (1913), “Falling Asleep during the Analysis” (1914), and “The ‘Forgetting’ of a Symptom and Its Explanation in a Dream” (1914). All these papers are of inestimable value and foreshadow his later theoretical work, with its profound understanding of the forces of transference and countertransference and its attention to the dynamics of empathy and regression. Ferenczi’s relational and interactional clinical method, which remains his most lasting contribution, has been taken up in various forms by virtually the entire psychoanalytic community ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction: Ferenczi’s Turn in Psychoanalysis
• Part I: Contexts and Continuities
• Part II: Disciple and Dissident
• Part III: Theory and Technique
• Index