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Dr. Arnold Rachman's book, Sándor Ferenczi: The Psychotherapist of Tenderness and Passion, is a masterful work that re-establishes Ferenczi to his rightful place in the psychoanalytic movement.
Although traditional psychoanalytic theorists, dating back to Sigmund Freud, and Ernest Jones, tended to separate Ferenczi's work from mainstream ideas, there has been a recent increase of interest in the psychoanalytic inquiry of Ferenczi (Aron, 1996; Aron & Harris, 1993; Bergman & Hartmann, 1976; Gedo, 1986; Haynal, 1991; Masson, 1984; Roazen, 1976; Staton, 1991). Rachman's book is the most comprehensive of these publications.
was a Hungarian psychoanalyst whose primary emphasis was on the development of a practical, therapeutic technique based on the psychoanalytic model. Rachman's book starts with Ferenczi's family background, personality and training. The reader comes to know Ferenczi as a person. Rachman discusses the historical suppression of Ferenczi's ideas and the impact that this had upon the development of psychoanalysis as a whole. The “turning away from Ferenczi” was a result of controversy between Ferenczi and Freud as well as other Freud followers, particularly Jones.
At the beginning of his book, Rachman eloquently describes the politics which established the atmosphere within the psychoanalytic community at the beginning of the 20th century. Conflicts over power, status and control were rampant. Four chapters are devoted to Ferenc-zi's oedipal rivalries with Jones, Groddeck, Jung, and Rank each vying for the position of Freud's “favorite son.”
This controversy was compounded by Ferenczi's radical psychoanalytic beliefs, ideas which emerged from his experience with patients. Ferenczi asserted that an analyst should try to work with all patients