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According to a footnote, this paper is based on a paper read to the British Psychoanalytic Society on May 5, 1948, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of Ferenczi's death. Balint inserts in his commemorative address reviews of Ferenczi's first and last Congress papers (Psychoanalysis and Education, 1908, and Confusion of Tongues Between Adult and Child, 1932) which at that time were not translated into English.
Balint begins his paper by stating that 'Ferenczi's was a tragic fate… Let us follow Freud's example, who compared Ferenczi with Abraham in his obituary note on the latter.' Actually, Freud wrote: 'So high a place had he [Abraham] won for himself that, of all who had followed me … there is only one whose name could be put beside his'.1 Balint goes on to say, 'With Abraham nothing ever went wrong.[!] He was a born president… His theories were universally accepted, have been quoted correctly… Ferenczi was seldom studied thoroughly, seldom quoted correctly, was often criticized, more often than not erroneously. More than once his ideas were rediscovered later and then attributed to the second discoverer.' We have to ask: is not this rather the common than the tragic fate of every original, ingenious thinker? Does not the same hold true for Freud even today?
Balint then sets out to look for the internal causes of the 'tragic fate' in Ferenczi's personality. His whole argument is naïve and full of contradictory statements. This is his conclusion: 'I think this was the insurmountable barrier separating Ferenczi from his colleagues. Freud and Abraham were essentially mature adults. Ferenczi, in spite of his profound insight, of his many-sided talents, his unsurpassed qualities as a clinical observer, and his unbounded scientific fantasies, was essentially a child all his life.'
For those who might be misled by Balint's statements, we quote Freud: 'The sure feeling of belonging together remained undisturbed …2 'One puts aside the little book