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This section of the issue was suggested by Joe Lichtenberg, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Inquiry when we discussed the potential contributions for this Ferenczi issue. Joe said, “Why don’t you include an article about how Ferenczi has influenced the practice of contemporary analysts?” As soon as we heard this suggestion, we knew it was a great idea. Ferenczi’s dissident ideas and methods have had enduring appeal to a group of psychoanalysts since their introduction eighty-seven years ago, in spite of deliberate attempts to suppress, criticize, ignore, or present personal and political attacks on his functioning (Rachman 1997a, 1997b, 1999).
Since then, Ferenczi’s work has been translated into French, English, Italian, and Spanish. A devoted group of American, European, and Latin psychoanalysts have demonstrated the significance of Ferenczi’s lost legacy for psychoanalysts. The enduring interest in Ferenczi’s ideas to this group of devoted followers, we believe, is due to an emotional connection to the drama of his life, career and to expression of his personality. Our contributors were asked to discuss their personal reactions to Ferenczi’s work and how they informed their clinical work.
Susan Klett outlined the contributions that Ferenczi’s work has made to her work with difficult cases, the kind to which Ferenczi had originally devoted his clinical focus. In particular, Klett believes that Ferenczi’s groundbreaking paper, “The Confusion of Tongues” (Ferenczi 1980), is crucial in her analysis of difficult cases. Ferenczi’s paper provided the emotional, as well as the intellectual, impetus to provide the therapeutic atmosphere necessary.
Michael Larivière, an analyst working in Strasbourg, France, described contributions that Ferenczi made to his personal analysis through the influence of Ferenczian analyst in France. He is grateful to him for following in Ferenczi’s footsteps by being a responsive not a withholding analyst.
Mr. M. W. is an analysand of Arnol