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The invitation to review this book instantly stirred within me a veritable stew of feelings: joy, curiosity, responsibility, awe, energy, and humility. Upon reflection, I realized that this was probably close to what Sándor Ferenczi felt upon meeting Sigmund Freud for the first time in February of 1908. Judging by the alacrity and zest with which Freud entered into first correspondence and then intimate friendship with Ferenczi, the feeling must have been mutual. Freud was then 52 years of age, Ferenczi 35. The meeting had been arranged by Jung, whom “the Budapesters” Ferenczi and his friend, Dr. Philipp Stein, both neuropsychiatrists, had visited in Zurich to study Jung's Word-Association technique.
No sooner had the two met than Ferenczi was sending a patient to Vienna for a consultation with Freud about her analyzability, and in the letter of introduction offering some pithy observations about the relation of folk-riddles to dreams, jokes, and symptom-interpretation. Freud's enthusiastic return-mail response concluded, “no one has followed me up on aesthetic aberrations such as jokes” (4, Feb. 11, 1908). There is such a delightful informality and ease about these earliest letters that it is no surprise to learn that two months later, at the first international meeting of psychoanalysts, in Salzburg, Freud has invited Ferenczi to spend part of the upcoming summer vacation with him and his family. In the years ahead, no one would even come close to matching Ferenczi's gift for following Freud up.