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Pedro Boschan, the first speaker, opened the panel arguing how important Ferenczi's ideas are for our current clinical practice. From a quite ‘Classical’ perspective he pointed out that, in Ferenczi's view, the transference-counter-transference field was much wider than the verbal exchange alone since it includes an archaic level of communication. The circulation of thoughts and feelings, sometimes transmitted almost telepathically, has to be carefully explored in the session and in the long wave of an analysis in order to make accessible to symbolization a material not ‘figurable’ and representable before. When the perception of this kind of thoughts and feelings is subjected to denial and disawoval by the analytic dyad, and above all by the analyst, according to Ferenczi the original traumatic situation is inevitably re-enacted, so that in our work we need in this regard to be sincere both with ourselves and with our patients to the point of, somehow, being mutual and symmetric in the analytic exchange.
The other two speakers, Jonathan Sklar and Josette Garon, presented from slightly different points of view (one ‘British Independent’, the latter strongly linked to a ‘French stance’), the clinical application of Ferenczi's theory with two very difficult patients, whose analysis - characterized by a negative transference - was stuck with no end to be seen. Sklar showed in his paper, Somatic resistance to termination: The contemporary use of active technique, his use of Ferenczi's ‘active therapy’ in a treatment where, after nine years of work, the patient started to have persistent severe physical symptoms related to the end of the analysis. Basically, for bringing up the affect, Sklar had to invite his patient to scream to help her to feel and talk about her profound rage and sadness, which she had always kept away from the emotional level. He stressed that in this case his action had nothing to do with a ‘suggestive order’ or a ‘cathartic abreaction’, but rather t