You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
ARECENT ISSUE OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSIS (Vol. 24, no. 2) contained a section that concentrated on Sandor Ferenczi from several perspectives: three authors specifically addressed themselves to Ferenczi's "Confusion of tongues" (1933) ; three authors considered Ferenczi's contributions as well as the concepts of some psychoanalysts who preceded and some who followed and were apparently influenced by Ferenczi.
Ferenczi's paper, "The confusion of tongues, " first published in 1933, was a bold and daring departure from the psychoanalytic thinking of that time. In it one sees the subsequent ideas of Winnicott, Kohut, Sullivan, Thompson, and much of contemporary writing having to do with issues of the personality of the analyst, the real relationship between the analyst and the patient, and the more refined technical issues having to do with transference and countertransference. The degree to which contemporary theoreticians have been influenced by Ferenczi, or have arrived at their ideas through their own original thinking is difficult to ascertain, although we do know that Sullivan recommended Ferenczi to Thompson, and Winnicott surely knew him via Klein and Jones. We are all influenced by our prior exposure to ideas and experiences, and yet our sources are frequently elided. What is important is what is retained and ultimately what seems to be most useful when applied to the process of psychoanalysis.
It is my observation that each of the authors who addressed this topic in Contemporary Psychoanalysis took at original position, further refining and adding to the development of psychoanalysis. To the authors' credit there is little redundancy in the articles. Each