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The structure of this book lends itself to the multiple perspectives and voices that the authors aim to bring to their contemporary views of Sandor Ferenczi's ideas. After an introductory chapter on “Reading Ferenczi”, the book consists of three parts, each one with a specific focus by one of the authors followed by responses from the other two. The trio of authors are multi-disciplinary and international. Soreanu is a psychoanalyst and professor of psychoanalytic studies at the University of Essex, England, with connections to Brazilian psychoanalytic organizations. Staberg, based in Sweden, is a practising psychoanalyst and professor/lecturer of comparative literature and aesthetics. Willner is also a professor of comparative literature in Germany. Their dialogues on Ferenczi bring his highly relevant focus on trauma into the centre stage of 21st century thinking that informs psychoanalytic theory and clinical work.
In the introductory chapter the authors use a 1934 painting by the Dada artist Hannah Hoch (that is portrayed on the book's cover) as a metaphor. The painting itself, a fragment of a dancer, consists of a pair of legs, without a body, that are performing a pirouette backwards. The painting's “fragmentation” parallels Ferenczi's focus on trauma and the authors consider the backwards leap as regression which can be a survival response in catastrophe. The chapter describes the “ghost” status of Ferenczi through his unacknowledged influence on psychoanalytic theorists and the recent revival of his legacy and his rightful place as an “ancestor” in the evolution of psychoanalysis.
Ferenczi, like Jung, worked closely with Freud in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement. All three travelled together to the United States in 1909 and, like Jung, but 20 years later, Ferenczi split with Freud over theoretical and clinical innovations that Freud could not tolerate. The fateful last meeting between Ferenczi and Freud in 1932 is described in detail in the openi