The Origins of a Relational Perspective in the Ideas of Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis

Sándor ferenczi's ideas have influenced the development of the object relations (Balint, 1968), interpersonal (Wolstein, 1990), and self psychology (Rachman, 1989) perspectives, but it is the relational perspective that is most relevant to Ferenczi's original contributions. Ferenczi's two-person psychology emphasized the fundamental dimension of a relational perspective, e.g., the interpersonal familial experience that is internalized, creating emotional disturbance for the child. The idea was not new, originating in Freud's original formulation of the seduction hypothesis about the origins of hysteria or neurosis (Freud, 1954). Ferenczi's contribution was that he never wavered from this assumption and helped establish it as a significant psychological factor as he gathered clinical evidence with cases where disturbed familial interaction had produced a wide array of clinical disorders (Ferenczi, 1932). However, he also contributed his unique perspective by suggesting the cure for neurosis and more severe forms of