Sincerity and Freedom in Psychoanalysis 7: Ferenczi and Others

Panel 7: Ferenczi and Others

Sincerity and Freedom in Psychoanalysis: a studio conference inspired by Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary

18-20 October 2013

Tom Keve - The Jung-Ferenczi Dossier

Isabel Halton - Mrs Klein and the Diary

Yves Lugrin - Lacan-Ferenczi … a paradoxical kinship?

Facilitator: Giselle Galdi

Tom Keve - The Jung-Ferenczi Dossier

The acquaintance between Ferenczi and C G Jung, pre-dates their first encounter with Sigmund Freud. Later, a triangular relationship developed when the three men crossed the Atlantic together and spent an extended period in one another’s company. Ferenczi’s friendship with Jung could not survive the latter’s break with Freud, but it’s development between 1907 and 1913 is evidenced by unpublished letters from Jung to Ferenczi, found in the Ferenczi Archive, now at the Freud Museum.

Isabel Halton - Mrs Klein and the Diary

In 1959 Klein wrote “While living in Budapest. I had become interested in psycho-analysis…I went into analysis with Ferenczi, who was the most outstanding Hungarian analyst, and he very much encouraged my idea of devoting myself to analysis, particularly child analysis, for which he said I had a particular talent.”

Ferenczi had an important influence on Melanie Klein’s ideas. In this talk I want to look at the clinical diaries and try to map the kind of influence he had on Mrs Klein’s work.

Yves Lugrin - Lacan-Ferenczi … a paradoxical kinship?

“In my teaching, I always give a special consideration to Ferenczi’s spiritual line of thought” : here is what Lacan confides in 1953 to M. Balint, “one of the best trained psychoanalysts in Ferenczi’s school of authenticity”. Nevertheless, this tribute paid to the author of “the luminous paper on psychoanalytical elasticity” is not given without strict, sometimes unfair criticism.

Moreover, from 1963 onwards, Ferenczi seems to disappear from Lacan’s horizon of thought, most of his students neglecting Ferenczi’s crucial role in the history of psychoanalysis, and failing to realize that his work should not be forgotten. Yet today, more than thirty years after Lacan’s death, we discover that in his own destiny as an psychoanalyst, he remained stangely loyal to “the passion for analyzing” that he early detected in Ferenczi whom he considered as “the most pertinent” among the pioneers “in his questioning what is required from the psychoanalyst, and specially about the end of the cure”

Each in his own psychoanalytical singularity, Lacan and Ferenczi were both “the most tormented by the psychoanalytical action”. But was it the same torment? And what were the differences?