Editorial

As is well known, Ferenczi broadened our ways of observing clinical facts from the beginning of his therapeutic experience, disorientating and upsetting the more established commonplaces of nascent psychoanalysis. He did this with no hostile or cynical reason in mind, but for love of the method in which he firmly believed and because of his profound faith in the possibilities for its development. He conceived the idea that it was not psychoanalysis itself that effected a cure, but the person who worked with and used all its specific means. More than anything it is this variable - the subjectivity of the analyst and the dynamic of their psychic functioning in contact with that of the patient - that Ferenczi introduced into Freudian metapsychology and classical practice, thus challenging many of the theoretical and technical bases of the new discipline and vigorously requiring the psychoanalytic community (and himself) to re-elaborate them without qualm or reservation.

Essentially Ferenczi brought into play the emotional involvement of the analyst, sharpening its focus not only in the sensations, feelings and anxieties that we inevitably feel during the interaction of the analytic situation, but also in the prejudices, privileges and values that accompany our attitude and behaviour as a person and a specialist. He then began to distinguish both positive and facilitating effects of this involvement and iatrogenic and interfering ones, regarding the project and process of psychic growth.

On the one hand he basically invited us to strengthen our capacity to identify with the needs and pain of our patients, reminding us how our limits can be lessened if we modestly position ourselves to accept the - very often cryptic - indications that come from them. On the other hand, he pointed out that inappropriately recognized and assisted needs and pain tend to re-present themselves and are repeated in life and in analysis, the patient searching for someone who knows how to acknowle