In These Pages…

I am very pleased to offer these eight papers from among those presented in the beautiful spa tohtwn of Baden-Baden last August at the Clinical Sándor Ferenczi Conference, “Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatics: Mind, Body, and the Bridge Between.” All but one were plenary presentations. Our meeting commemorated Sándor Ferenczi's friendship and collaboration with Georg Groddeck. Ferenczi, often called “the mother of psychoanalysis,” called Groddeck his “brother confessor.” Groddeck is lauded as “the father of psychosomatic medicine.” All the Ferenczi conferences, prior meetings having been held in New York City, then Budapest, São Paolo, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Turin and London, have succeeded in bringing Ferenczi and his writings the attention they have deserved, but for so long were denied. In my view, Ferenczi originated what is now called “relational psychoanalysis,” a branch too often referred to as “new.” He strongly influenced Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Clara Thompson and their interpersonal school of psychoanalysis, and thus the works of Harold Searles. Through Michael Balint, he profoundly influenced British psychoanalysis's Middle School and Donald Winnicott's work. It is no wonder that Winnicott was excited on discovering Searles's writings; he had found a “cousin.”

Groddeck, a Baden-Baden physician, was famous for announcing, “I am a wild analyst,” by which he meant that he himself had never been a patient in psychoanalysis. Groddeck gave papers extemporaneously, leading listeners to regard him as a wild presenter as well. He bubbled over with psychoanalytic enthusiasm, and the cherished belief that “mind” and “body” are indivisible. His best-known book was The Book of the It; Freud credited him with introducing the term “id.” Other works included The Meaning of Illness, The Unknown Self and The Soulseeker. He believed that organic symptoms have symbolic meanings, with roots in unconscious conflicts.

Massage therapy was integral to Groddeck's t