Introduction: Second Florence Ferenczi Issue

The 13th International Ferenczi Conference, held in Florence, Italy, was a forum where scholars from different disciplines: psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, counselors, academics, psycho-historians, artists, writers-representing different orientations: classical, interpersonal, relational, object-relations, the Frankfurt School, and social sciences perspectives-connected in dialogues that bridged ideological gaps often resulting in the birth of new ideas and ways of thinking about and working with clinical phenomena. The impressive caesura of birth was experienced in the various discussion groups penetrated and impregnated with papers which had incubated in the minds of authors over three years since the last such meeting in Toronto in 2015. (For a selection of previously published papers of the Florence conference, see Koritar, 2018a, b) Authors representing different viewpoints joined in a whirlwind of bi-partisan discourse in the caesura between often polar opposite perspectives. The joining of thesis and antithesis gives birth to synthesis. The conceptual mingled with the empirical gives rise to transcendental thought. Various polarities intermingled: Freud/Ferenczi, intrapsychic/interpersonal, Darwin/Lamarck, phylogenetic/environmental, past/present, life/death, being/nothingness, virtual/analogical, experiential/conceptual, this-or-that/this-and-that. Binaries that are entrenched in