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No one wrote an introduction to Sandor Ferenczi's works for over half a century after his death. In some respects Ferenczi has been the eccentric relative in the family of psychoanalysis who was to be left muttering harmlessly in the corner and not properly introduced. For he was somewhat embarrassing. He advocated worrying practices such as ‘mutual analysis’ and ‘active technique’ (Ferenczi 1920). And as if these irresponsible sounding methods do not arouse enough suspicion, there were rumours of a psychotic breakdown late in his life as well as allegations that he was promisouous with patients. Perhaps this reputation partly accounts for the fact that, in spite of Ferenczi's position as founding member and some time President of the International Psycho-analytical Association, there has been relatively little critical appreciation of his importance (Stanton 1990).
In spite of a growing interest in Ferenczi's thinking a caution towards him lingers in academic psychoanalytic circles. His techniques have been defined as ‘highly controversial’ and his contribution to psychoanalysis typically summed up in terms of his followers more than himself: ‘as the analyst of Klein, Balint and Clara Thompson, Ferenczi was an important figure, directly or indirectly, in the psychoanalytic lineage of all the major relational model innovators’ . There has been broad consensus on such views. Ferenczi has been valued more as an ‘influence’ than a thinker in his own right. Perhaps for this reason his works have traditionally barely figured on the reading lists of Kleinian theory courses in Britain.
Yet a direct approach to Ferenczi's texts cannot fail to enrich as well as challenge. Ferenczi rarely recycles psychoanalytic givens without simultaneously being inspired to fresh insights and additions. Whether these seem brilliant or implausible, they reveal a startling originality and an extraordinary intuitive resource. His is a deeply creative imagination that proliferates with everythin