Spiritism

The editors of The Psychoanalytic Review are pleased to present, for the first time in psychoanalytic literature (to our knowledge), an English translation by Dr. Nandor Fodor of Sándor Ferenczi's first scientific paper. It was published in 1899 in a Hungarian medical journal called Gyógyászat (Science of Healing) in Budapest. The title and the subject reveal that the origin of Sándor Ferenczi's interest in the occult goes back far deeper in time than his correspondence with Freud reveals. Ferenczi, though a medical student in Vienna, did not contact Freud until 1906 or 1907. It was through Jung's association experiments that he became interested in psychoanalysis. Possibly, through analysis, he hoped to gain a better understanding of the occult, a field in which he had widely read and in which he had some unusual personal experiences. By present standards the article is antiquated, yet it holds historical interest in that it reveals Ferenczi's early and sound insight into the unconscious mental mechanism that may activate mediums. Certainly, his call for an objective scientific study of the reported phenomena at that time took admirable courage.

THE EDITORS

To evolve a definition is not an easy task. Even the greatest thinkers have been unable to give a generally acceptable definition of philosophy. Some christen it as the science of the most important principles of life, others as the sum total of knowledge derivable from all the sciences, still others as the science of knowing. Whatever may be the right definition, it permits no doubt that a susceptibility to the transcendental exists and ceaselessly manifests itself in every man. The first