Prologue

This edition of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is a landmark publication in that it contributes to the “Ferenczi Renaissance” (the contemporary reconsideration of Ferenczi as a significant figure in psychoanalysis) by devoting an entire professional journal to a focus on his ideas, methods, and relationships. Rediscovery of Sándor Ferenczi and his legacy to psychoanalysis has been necessary because his work was deliberately suppressed and his character maligned in a campaign to discredit him as a significant figure and remove him from mainstream psychoanalysis. Ferenczi's fate constitutes one of the darkest and most tragic periods in psychoanalytic history. It is a privilege to contribute to a continued reevaluation of his ideas and methods that can only enrich contemporary psychoanalysis, as well as allow Ferenczi to gain the recognition he deserves as one of the most talented clinicians in the history of our field. While Freud was the theoretical genius of psychoanalysis, as well as its founder, one could say Ferenczi was the clinical genius and the inspiration for modern analytic technique.

We have been very fortunate to gather together an international group of Ferenczi scholars, from Austria, France, Hungary, Switzerland and the United States, who represent orientations that Ferenczi influenced: Freudian, interpersonal, object relations, relational, and self psychology.

Claude Lorin brings us a fascinating excursion into the discovery of Ferenczi's earliest writings in the Hungarian medical journal Gyogyazat, before Ferenczi joined Freud as a collaborator. Lorin believes this early material shows the pre-Freudian Ferenczi who was a creative pioneer in psychiatry and psychotherapy before he began collaborating with Freud.

John Gedo reexamines one of Ferenczi's classic monographs, The Development of Psychoanalysis, coauthored with Otto Rank in 1924. This work, long out of print, was the first formal critique of psychoanalysis and raised issues such as the degree of th