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The ferenczi center opened at the new school1 IN NEW York in 2008, in tribute to Sándor Ferenczi. The mission was to create interest in and share the ideas and contributions of a brilliant thinker, an innovative clinical researcher, a controversial man, and a renaissance psychoanalyst. I spoke with Jeremy Safran, the co-chair of the Ferenczi Center, about Sándor Ferenczi and the hopes and dreams for the center.
Jill Choder-Goldman: Did the creation of the Ferenczi Center come out of the conference in 1991 given by Lew Aron and Adrienne Harris?
Jeremy Safran: Not directly … although the 1991 conference on Ferenczi organized by Lew and Adrienne did play an indirect role. In a more immediate sense, however, Lew Aron was asked by the International Sándor Ferenczi Foundation to set up an American branch for the Ferenczi Foundation. The International Ferenczi Foundation was founded by Andre Haynal, and its board members include people such as Judit Mészáros from Budapest (who gave the invited address at our inaugural event), Carlo Bonomi and Franco Borgogno in Italy. After
Lew had been invited to set up the American branch, he contacted Adrienne and me and asked us to join him as cofounders, and we agreed to do so. There were already branches in Budapest, London, Paris, Florence, and Buenos Aires. So our center is the sixth national branch.
JCG: Do you think this resurgence started when the Ferenczi Diaries were published in 1985, and that had something to do with all of this interest?
JS: That was one of the factors. Another was the growing interest in Ferenczi in the United States, which was galvanized by the emergence of the relational tradition. Another was Andre Haynal's publication of Controversies in Psychoanalytic Method, in 1989. In that book Haynal did a brilliant job of discussing Ferenczi's close and complex relationship with Freud, the development of Ferenczi's more innovative ideas, and the emergence of the Budapest