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In his paper, Lewis Aron used the recently published correspondence between Ferenczi and Freud to demonstrate that the idealistic pursuit of mutuality in relationships was a lifelong passion of Ferenczi's, rooted in his personality and character structure. Aron argued that Ferenczi's passion for mutual openness was not the cause of the madness at the end of his life, nor was it a simple by-product of his unresolved negative transference to Freud, or the effect of an inadequate and interrupted training analysis. Rather, the search for mutual honesty and openness was a longstanding character trait of Ferenczi's that often led to conflict between him and Freud. This idealistic passion for openness and intimate relating was the basis for the so-called “deviation” from “Freudian” analysis toward the end of Ferenczi's life. To illustrate these claims, Aron examined a series of letters exchanged between Freud and Ferenczi in 1910 after a summer vacation spent together in Palermo, Sicily, where they discussed the Schreber case.
To Aron, these letters challenge the traditional view of the Palermo quarrel as emblematic of Ferenczi's insatiable longing for Freud's love by revealing that the character structure of each of these two gifted men was determined by their psychoanalytic constructs. According to Aron, the letters show how Ferenczi's character structure required a more mutual, open, affective exchange than did Freud's paternalistic, distant one. Freud dismissed Ferenczi's desire for more openness and intimacy as an expression of infantile longings, feminine character traits, and homosexual inclinations. Ferenczi admitted to these impulses, but unlike Freud, saw all aspects of character as valuable, and expressed disappointment, not only in his older colleague's resistance to these ideas but also in his lack of relatedness and friendship. While Aron reads the letters as expressive of Freud's affective detachment and Ferenczi's desire for mutuality, he also finds them ind