Sándor Ferenczi and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis

Two years ago was the 100th anniversary of the first fateful meeting between Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi. Ferenczi's visit to Freud's home at No. 19 Berggasse on the 2nd of February, 1908, not only marked the beginning of a deep friendship and lifelong professional relationship, but also opened the door to a new perspective in the psychoanalytic movement just then emerging. Ferenczi developed innovative concepts in scholarly thinking and on the meeting points of culture and psychoanalysis. He and the members of the Budapest School represented not only Hungarian roots but also the values, the scholarly approach, and the creativity characteristic of Central Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century. They were fundamental in supplying the world with a great many scholars and artists—among them nuclear physicists Edward Teller and Leo Szilard, mathematician John von Neumann, father of the modern computer, and writer Sándor Márai; the latter two were close to Ferenczi.

Ferenczi energized the psychoanalytic movement. He launched the paradigm shift that still affects psychotherapeutic theory and practice today. At the same time, he proposed the setting up of key institutions.