Sandor Ferenczi on Female Sexuality

At first glance it seems an odd choice to consider the place of Sandor Ferenczi in the history of psychoanalytic theories of female sexuality. Ferenczi, as a member of the pioneer generation of psychoanalysts, had little consensual identification as a theorist, much less in the realm of sexual theory. However, the long-delayed publication of the Clinical Diary (in French in , in English in 1988) has set in motion a reevaluation of Ferenczi's contributions to psychoanalysis. The exploration of this theme in his writings is thus particularly timely.

Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933) was one of the small group of original analysts surrounding Freud. Ernest Jones (1955, 1957), whose biography of Freud blackened Ferenczi's reputation, nevertheless admitted that of this group Ferenczi was “the most brilliant … and the one who stood closest to Freud” (p. 157). Virtually from the time of their first meeting in 1908, Ferenczi was Freud's chief intimate and regular travelling companion. He was widely acknowledged to be the most gifted analyst of them all, in Jones's words, “with a remarkable flair for divining the manifestations of the unconscious” (p. 157). The proper measure of the relationship with Freud is the still-unpublished voluminous correspondence between them that spanned 25 years and continued uninterruptedly until Ferenczi's death in 1933, despite growing tensions between the two after 1926.

Michael Balint (1967) reported that, at the outbreak of World War I, when analysts found themselves without patients, Ferenczi had some “training analysis” with Freud over a period of several months in order to supplement his own self-analysis. Ferenczi was profoundly affected by this exposure to the phenomenon of transference first hand. He greatly valued this brief analysis, yet to the end of his life remained painfully aware that it had been incomplete. He resumed his own clinical practice with a heightened sensitivity to the patient's experience of transference and also to the