Controversies in Psychoanalytic Method: Freud, Ferenczi, Balint: Andre E. Haynal, translated by Elizabeth Holder, with a preface by Daniel N. Stern,  Karnac Books, London, 1988,  202 pp., £13.95.

Andre Haynal has written an excellent overview of the story of the Budapest school of psychoanalysis. Although the literature about the early followers of Freud seems immense, in fact there remains a substantial gap between what is generally acknowledged within clinical circles and what has succeeded in reaching the broad reading public. So that while Sandor Ferenczi's path-breaking innovations are widely appreciated among practicing analysts, Freud's own private judgment that Ferenczi's technical recommendations meant that Ferenczi had become psychotic has been widely circulated in Jones's popular authorized biography of Freud. Yet the full extent to which Ferenczi's contributions anticipated later liberal trends in psychoanalytic thinking deserves the emphasis that Haynal gives it; otherwise Ferenczi's clinical wheel is going to be reinvented without adequately acknowledging the credit Ferenczi deserves for his achievements.

For new material Haynal relies on Ferenczi's 1932 Clinical Diary, which first appeared in French in 1985;  Harvard University Press published it in English in November 1988. Haynal also has had access to the full Freud-Ferenczi correspondence, which is still being prepared for publication in Paris and will be the next most important addition to our understanding of early psychoanalysis. Furthermore, Haynal has worked with the Balint Archives in Geneva; Michael Balint was Ferenczi's main student, the most noteworthy follower to develop the insights that Ferenczi first made.