Editorial

Is it not interesting that in 1899 Hungary had a Journal devoted to therapy? The histories of psychotherapy and psycho-analysis in Britain and Hungary are widely different, due of course to the vastly differing social and political histories. Such cultural divergence led no doubt to the emergence of the towering originality of Sandor Ferenczi in Hungary, whilst in Britain Ernest Jones dedicated himself more to the pragmatic role of organising the psycho-analytic movement. One cannot perhaps judge whose was the greater contribution, only to note the major contrast in their types of achievement.

Ferenczi's birthday, 120 years ago is being celebrated this July in Budapest with an International Conference. But it surely also celebrates the emergence of the enormously renewed interest in psycho-analysis in Eastern Europe. And we publish a clutch of papers (gathered by Martin Stanton) in this issue of the Journal; including an obituary by Ferenczi of a man who was an important early influence on him.

Contemporary with the rehabilitation of psycho-analysis in Eastern Europe, the psycho-analytic world in general is beginning a rehabilitation of Ferenczi - see for instance Andre Haynal The Technique at Issue: Controversies in Psycho-Analysis from Freud and Ferenczi to Michael Balint (London: Karnac); Martin Stanton Sandor Ferenczi: Reconsidering Active Intervention (London: Free Association Books); Sandor Ferenczi Clinical Diaries (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press).

Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein and Michael Balint were Ferenczi's foremost analysands in Britin. Jones and Klein went their own ways but Balint brought his own special commitment to Ferenczi. Despite that he created only a moderate respect for Ferenczi himself. This no doubt goes back to the early thirties when Ferenczi and Jones were in intense rivalry for Freud's favour (Ferenczi to hang on to it, and Jones to take it over); and eventually Jones succeeding in achieving the position of President of The Int