Second Special Issue: Heritage of a Psychoanalytic Mind. Ferenczi International Conference in Toronto*

Sándor Ferenczi was one of the most innovative thinkers on the early psychoanalytic scene, the enfant terrible of psychoanalysis as he called himself in his conference presented to celebrate Freud's 75th anniversary (Ferenczi, 1931, p. 127). Much of his work revolved around the question of trauma and the treatment of those who were its victims. Ferenczi played a major role in the development of psychoanalytic clinical work and its transmission, even if it was a long time before the analytic community would recognize it. The core of Ferenczi's work lies in his concept of trauma. He considered physical, sexual, emotional or psychical trauma as central in the etiology of psychopathology. In his understanding of trauma, the child's tender and affectionate feelings have been jostled by the passions of an adult, which impose premature sexual and emotional demands on an “innocent” child. Ferenczi maintains that trauma lies essentially in the fact that the distressed child finds no response from the caretaking other or is confronted with disavowal. The consequences of trauma go from identification with the aggressor and loss of confidence in his own perceptions, feelings, and interpretation of reality, to splitting and fragmentation of the self. The child must then resort to severely neurotic, borderline, or psychotic “solutions”. In the case of transgenerational transmission of trauma, even