Thank you for including me in the process of commenting on Dr. Carolyn Ellman's excellent scholarly paper. The topic of her paper is close to my heart, as a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst. I have been involved in the Ferenczi renaissance for many years, and I also admire Sheldon Bach's work and writings. His work often reminds me of the Ferenczian spirit.
A few brief points.
Please note: her name was Gizella Ferenczi, with a “z” not Gisella. Gisela—with one “l” is the German version. However, Ferenczi's wife never signed anything the German way. Just like Ferenczi was always Sándor, the Hungarian name, not Alexander, the German version. In his German language letters, Freud always addressed Ferenczi's wife as Frau Gizella.
It is a bit reductionistic to characterize this an “affair”, i.e., emphasizing the sexual aspects, given the complex intruding and gossiping by both Freud and Ferenczi about the treatment of Elma. Roazen, 1998, called it “psychoanalytically inspired meddling in Elma's life.”
I would recommend the 3 volume Freud & Ferenczi correspondence (Freud & Ferenczi 1908–1914, 1914–1919, 1920–1933) as a main source for this subject.
Vilma Kovács should be added to the list. Mahler was not analyzed by Ferenczi. He introduced psychoanalysis to her when as a very young person she was a frequent visitor at the Kovács residence, and the Ferenczi circle and was greatly influenced by him. Mahler's analysts were August Aichhorn, Helene Deutsch, and Willi Hoffer. On Spitz—Ferenczi was one of his teachers in Budapest, but Spitz's analyst was Freud. To the best of my knowledge, Otto Rank was neither analyzed by Ferenczi nor Freud. He had a very close, intimate personal relationship with Freud
until their fallout. Also, Rank collaborated with Ferenczi in the 1920s, but he was not analyzed by anyone as far as I know. Theresa Benedek should be added to the list of Ferenczi's analysands too.
The word, Totschweigen, had been used when Menaker lived in Vienna. I would characterize Rachman's reference to her as anecdotal. Actually, the idea of Totschweigen goes back to the very early days of the psychoanalytic world. Freud's disapproval of anyone who went their own way, or was not sufficiently loyal to him, led to exclusion of the “disloyal” person, followed by systematic silence, see Jung, Adler, Rank, Tausk, etc. And one of the glaring examples of Totschweigen was Ferenczi because of his last years of disagreements with Freud's perspectives about clinical work, trauma and the role of sexual drives in the nature of the UCS mind (See Ferenczi's 1915 “Dialogue of the Unconsciouses”, a relational concept of the UCS). After Freud's death, the Holocaust and major displacements of European psychoanalysts, his loyal followers tightly held onto every word of Freud, and carried on with Ferenczi's dismissal, exclusion. For example, Ferenczi's role in the history of psychoanalysis was so fully repressed that “This presidency of the International Psychanalytical Association has been all but forgotten, and it was only in 1996 that the former President of the IPA, Horacio Etchegoyen, noticed a glaring omission in the portrait gallery of Presidents in Broomhills— Sándor Ferenczi'”(Falzeder & Dupont, 2000; Bonomi, 1999, p. 507).
Another example, “psychoanalysts seemed to have “discovered” countertransference in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. It is still a widely accepted notion that it was Racker who in 1952 first systematically widened Freud's original view of countertransference—an obstruction to the work, stemming from the analysts’ resistances and unresolved conflicts—an idea that was sustained by the five-decades-long “Totschweigen” (death by silence) of Ferenczi. In fact, Ferenczi was the first who explored the analyst's deep involvement with the analytic process in connection with the so-called “difficult patient.” (Galdi, 1998, p. 3).
Axel Hoffer (1991, p. 466) wrote:
“An admittedly oversimplified metaphor provides a frame to begin our inquiry: if Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis,
Page 127Sándor Ferenczi was the mother. Psychoanalysis lost its mother through Ferenczi's untimely death of pernicious anemia in 1933 at a time when each man was profoundly upset and disillusioned with the other. Psychoanalysis thus became a one-parent child. Ferenczi's work on the early dyadic mother-child relationship and its reliving in the analytic situation came to a premature end.”
It was called the “kissing technique” letter, in Freud's words (Freud & Ferenczi, 1920–1933, Freud's letter to Ferenczi, December 13, 1931; also described by Ferenczi in the Clinical Diary, the entry on January 7, 1932, titled, Insensitivity of the Analyst. Ferenczi writes: “See the case of Dm. [Ferenczi's code for Clara Thompson], a lady who, ‘complying’ with my passivity, had allowed herself to take more and more liberties, and occasionally even kissed me. Since this behavior met with no resistance, since it was treated as something permissible in analysis and at most commented on theoretically: [Connected to Ferenczi's technical experiments with analytic abstinence, his “principle of relaxation”, 1930], she remarked quite casually in the company of other patients, who were undergoing analysis elsewhere: ‘I am allowed to kiss Papa Ferenczi, as often as I like.’ I first reacted to the unpleasantness that ensued with the complete impassivity with which I was conducting this analysis. It was only through the insight and admission that my passivity had been unnatural that she was brought back to real life. It became evident … that as a child, Dm. had been grossly abused sexually by her father, obviously because of the father's bad conscience and social anxiety, he reviled her. The daughter had to take revenge on her father indirectly, by failing in her own life” (Ferenczi, 1932, pp. 2–3).
The analysis of Elma with Ferenczi, at the suggestion of her mother, Gizella, started in July 1911, and went well for a few months. Then one of Elma's admirers killed himself, and Ferenczi wrote to Freud: “It is very questionable how the matter will go now.” (See Ferenczi to Freud, October 18, . Letter # 244, pp. 303–304). Elma became depressed and her transference toward Ferenczi took another turn (Freud & Ferenczi, 1908–1914, Letter # 252, p. 312). Ferenczi wrote: “Elma became especially dangerous to meet the moment when—after that young man's
suicide—she badly needed someone to support her and help her in her need. I did that only too well; even though I held my tenderness in check with difficulty for the moment. But the path was cleared—and now, to all appearances, she has won my heart.” Ferenczi also reminds Freud of his desire to have children which was not possible with the older Gizella. (Freud & Ferenczi, 1908–1914, December 3, 1911, Letter # 256, p. 318. Italicized by Ferenczi). In his research in London, in the 1960s, Paul Roazen asked Michael Balint about the alleged “intimacy between Ferenczi and Elma.” Roazen writes: “Balint denied that there had been any sexual relationship but acknowledged that they had been very deeply in love” (Roazen, 1998, p. 275). Let's recall that Balint, the literary executor of Ferenczi's works, was very familiar with the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi. Roazen also describes his reaction to the 1st Freud-Ferenczi volume of their correspondences (1908–1914), and the involvement of Freud and Ferenczi with Elma, Gizella, about Freud's treatment of Elma. Roazen comments on “Freud and Ferenczi's human impropriety of the psychoanalytically inspired meddling in Elma's life”. etc. (Roazen, 1998, p. 282).
Ferenczi's work (1932, 1933) preceded Anna Freud's 1936 work. We know that Anna attended Ferenczi's presentation in Wiesbaden, in September 1932, where Ferenczi talked about the identification with the aggressor. She was the observer for her father. Of course, when she published her 1936 book, her Father was still alive and under no circumstances could she refer to Ferenczi's work.
Ferenczi writes in his Diary on October 2nd, 1932, after the Wiesbaden congress: “In my case the blood crisis arose when I realized that not only can I not rely on the protection of a ‘higher power’ but on the contrary I shall be trampled underfoot by this indifferent power as soon as I go my own way and not his. The insight this experience has helped me to attain is that I was brave (and productive) as long as I (unconsciously) relied for support on another power, that is, I had never really become ‘grown up’… . And now, just as I must build new red corpuscles, must I (if I can) create a new basis for my personality, if I have to abandon as false and untrustworthy the one I have had up to now? Is the choice here
one dying and ‘rearranging myself’—and this at the age of fifty-nine?” (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 212).
The three-volume official biography of Freud, 1953–1957, by Ernest Jones, Ferenczi's former analysand, “overshadowed historical facts” regarding Ferenczi. Paul Roazen writes that in the present time (1998) when we start to recognize Ferenczi's true worth, it “may not be remembered how low Ferenczi's reputation had once sunk” (p. 271). In the mid-1960s, interviewing survivors who knew Ferenczi, Roazen had the chance to examine the correspondence between Michael Balint and Jones. He discovered how much Balint disagreed with Jones' characterization of Ferenczi's mental state. Also, in 1958, Erich Fromm protested about Jones' character assassination of Ferenczi, by orthodox classical analysts, strict followers of Freud and wedded to their certitude.
See account of Dupont, 2000, titled “Ferenczi's trip to the United Sates and the question of lay analysis,” pp. xvii–xxix, on Ferenczi's the six-month visit at the New School, from September 1926 to March 1927. It is very worthwhile to read those pages by Dupont in the 3rd volume of the Freud-Ferenczi Correspondence. Dupont writes that the trip “foreshadowed the deepening rift between Freud and Ferenczi. Freud felt abandoned by Ferenczi, he feared that Ferenczi would end up in America permanently. He wrote above all of his failing health and his weariness. He seemed depressed and disillusioned.”
Peter Rudnytsky (1991) describes that a lack of acknowledgment of sources was a common criticism directed at Winnicott. For example, Charles Rycroft, also complained about Winnicott's inability to cite the works of others. According to Rudnytsky's analysis in his 1991 book, “The Psychoanalytic Vocation,” Winnicott rarely acknowledged his sources or parallel ideas found in the works of other psychoanalysts. Rudnytsky describes how Michael Balint, a fellow Independent analyst in the British Society, and a pupil and colleague of Ferenczi for many years, frequently called Winnicott's attention to the fact that he was using Ferenczi's ideas without referring to them. Winnicott admitted to his
weakness of not acknowledging others who came before him and at a British Psychoanalytical Society meeting he explained that he was not a librarian.