An Unfinished Fresco on Ferenczi as a Person and as a Psychoanalyst1

In these notes I would like to briefly introduce Ferenczi as a person and as a psychoanalyst. I will start to put on the carpet some questions around his figure as a person and, then, I will present some of his first ideas beginning from his first papers and connecting them to the whole of his writings.

Questions around Ferenczi as a Person

1) FIRST QUESTION: is Ferenczi an ordinary psychoanalyst or is he having in himself something bizarre and exotic, as many colleagues – even now but above all in the past – said?

ANSWER: Ferenczi is a typical cultivated man belonging to the Austro-Hungarian intelligentsia. He is a son of an important Hebrew family linked to many other relevant Hebrew families of that area. As Tom Keve (2000) narrates, from these families derived a considerable amount of all what we consider the best in our Western culture, science and art.

Is the reason of this prejudice his being Hungarian (Hungarians are taken, as we know, as a bit Tziganos, Gypsies)? In reality, his family

was magiarized: originally they moved from Galizia (now Poland) and opened a bookshop in Miskolc more or less in 1848. Don't forget, on this regard, that 1848 coincides with the birth of Risorgimento in all this part of Europe, Italy included.

The principal tongue of Ferenczi's works was German (very similar to the Yiddish of that time) and only later Hungarian. Often he wrote his papers in English, if not in German…. : he wrote in German because German at that time was the language of psychoanalysis and in English because a group of his patients were English speaking (they came from London and from North America). Only in a second time he wrote again many of his papers translating them in Hungarian (this is one reason why the “International Ferenczi Foundation” is now thinking to re-publish Ferenczi's writings both – after a confrontation of the various versions – giving of them the much complete version, and for publishing some unpublished papers of him too).

Hungarian language, as the Finnish one, is a particular tongue full of paraphrases, metaphors and poetry. While English synthesizes and condenses, Hungarian enriches and it is a more affective, more concrete, less abstract and rational tongue.

But, independently from that, Ferenczi was surely – since from his first sorties – original, personal, direct and spontaneous…; little or nothing entrapped in conformism and in Psychoanalyses [that is, in a psychoanalytic jargon]. He started to use his own words and his own images and associations: not always of course, but reading his papers one after the other (in sequence and focusing the attention on the preconscious movement of thought, as I proposed: see Borgogno, 1999) one can see that peculiar direction which became really free only after the second part of the Twenties… when he was progressively, and truly, able to separate himself from Freud and capable to speak with his own voice. He was aware of this difficulty in differentiating himself from Freud and, because of this reason, in his vision of the analysis it was from the start extremely important to facilitate in the patient the reaching of his own personal voice… and, as for the analyst, to be careful not to introduce words and feelings that would be alien and foreign to the heart, mouth, or mind of “the other”.

It is important to recall here that regards to Freud frequently in the past Ferenczi renounced to himself… also to the woman he liked… due to his need to be loved by Freud. Choosing Gizella – chosen by Freud because more mature than Gizella's daughter Elma and, additionally, a colleague – he renounced to become father and to have children (Gizella

was too old to have them). For this reason at the end of his life he said to Freud – who asked him to sacrifice the “island of his child and adolescent dreams” in order to accept to be the new IPA President – that at the time the only sons he could have were his thoughts and that for all this he could not satisfy another time Freud's requests as he did in the past (Freud, Ferenczi, 1920-1933).

But, I ask you all: is to have a personal voice equivalent to be a bit crazy and bizarre?

In his days for many of his colleagues (mainly brothers… envious and jealous seeing that he was analyzed by Freud, though his analysis was terribly short, but this was the habit of the time) every psychoanalyst, having a personal mind, was easily intended to be psychically ill (“a monstrous damage!”) due to a Stalinist group situation.

Hence, it derives exactly from here his commitment to “the other” and his respect for “the other”, who had to be “horticultured” (S. Ferenczi, 1908c, p. 281) and safeguarded. Keep in mind that “the other” in question was essentially for Ferenczi the “child”, the “baby”, the “infant”, the “newborn”. A child, a baby, an infant and a newborn many times – according to Ferenczi – unseen, not considered, unwelcome, or ill-treated and not rarely traumatized/abused.

In this sense, therefore, he was certainly “the other” in psychoanalysis; I mean: the spokesperson of the voice of the child, of the suffering person, of the unprivileged companion and so on.

But was he really “the other” regards to Freud?

I don't think so: suffice here to recall that the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi has been the richest one in the history of psychoanalysis between two colleagues. In other terms, rather, he simply was the “alter-ego” of Freud, an indispensable complement to him, just like Freud was a necessary complement to Ferenczi. This was the motivation of their reciprocal friendship and love: a true sharing of life, interests, passions… as Freud wrote about it (S. Freud, 1933). An homosexual love, we would say, seeing that each of them needed “the other” who represented an important part of themselves… .

On the other hand, how could we explain this kind of unity, of friendship who lasted all their life? But anyway they were also different… really different…

They met each other in 1908 and immediately set out for a sort of honey-moon journey to Palermo in 1909, where they started to beg because of a misunderstanding. Freud wished Ferenczi to assist silently

to his reflections and thoughts serving as a secretary who had to write Freud's thoughts, but Ferenczi wished to speak and to tell his opinions. This complaining was thus intended by Freud to be an homosexual drive, but Ferenczi conceived – on the contrary – his protest, his right to speak as perfectly natural in a really heterosexual confrontation, which meant for him the encounter of two different minds (Freud, Ferenczi, 1908-1914; see on this regard, A. Haynal, 2001).

By the way, they were speaking on that occasion about paranoia and homosexuality! On Schreber, above all.

But at the end – to conclude on this – before dying Freud re-read the last papers of Ferenczi with his daughter Anna and reached a different opinion in respect to them saying that Ferenczi went so far in comparison to him and his colleagues, since at the time he and they had not the psychic tools to fully understand his wonderful and forerunner mind (presently unsecretated documents). Also Ferenczi, just before dying (S. Ferenczi, 1932), was about to revise some of his ideas accepting some critiques by Freud. Don't forget, however, that ten years before Freud said that he was “visionary” (“in the island of his dreams”, as I told before), though already in those years he also wrote that Ferenczi was decidedly a master, a master for every psychoanalyst included himself, an insuperable creative master (S. Freud, 1933).

2) SECOND QUESTION: has Ferenczi become mad at the end of his life? As for example Jones has written in his biography of Freud and his life (E. Jones, 1953/1955/1957)?

FIRST ANSWER: absolutely not, he was ill of “anemia perniciosa”, an illness incurable in those days and so in some moments before dying he was surely in a clouded and not completely conscious state of mind but – independently of that – he was always lucid and appropriate in his thinking and in his relationships, intimate and working relationships, able – in short – of an extraordinary and profound working through of his experience and of his encounters. To test this statement you have solely to read the Clinical Diary… and to listen to the many and various testimonies of all those who were present in the last days of his life… not only relatives, friends, pupils… (C. Bonomi, 1999).

MOREOVER, was Ferenczi an improper analyst in his analyses, not deontologically correct? Not deontologically correct in his behaviours and attitudes?

SECOND ANSWER: absolutely not. On the contrary he had an unusual pedigree in comparison to the other analysts of those days. Every patient

remembered him as very respectful, affectionate, reliable and a very good analyst; and, besides that, not at all a “sugarman” (another prejudice): in fact he was a champion at that time of the interpretation of the various aspects and signs of the negative transferences, also when the negative transference appeared in a shifty way.

In case you think that working on the negative transferences means to believe in the death instinct and in the innate envy, of course Ferenczi was not a champion in interpreting negative transference manifestations in that manner!

Anyway in his writings it is possible to find myriad of observations on the cryptic and larval (anal, for example, and eroticized) forms of negative transferences… and suggestions on how to face them in a convincing way.

Yet, where does this prejudice about the inappropriateness of Ferenczi as an analyst comes from? It derives, from example, from events like the followings: the scandal of the Gisella/Elma affair (Freud, Ferenczi, 1908-1914; ; see: E. Berman, 2004); his having asked to his Croatian patient, a singer, to play the piano and sing during a session in order to share together what happened to her in those situations; his having bought to Clara Thompson a doll very similar to that she lost in infancy and having told to her to feel free to play with the doll during her sessions with him; his having allowed Clara Thompson to greet him with a kiss at the beginning and at the end of the sessions; and, at last, the mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn… .

I cannot here delve into all these junctures, but I can say that many of us would not see today in them any form of improper, even the less unethical, behavior in Ferenczi in those occasions. They can be seen as such, on the contrary, if we listen to rumors without going to read deeply his works and all the information connected to these situations (which incidentally are available, if one really wants to know about them).

3) THIRD QUESTION (the last one): did Ferenczi become an Author after having met Freud or were his papers already impressive before encountering him?

ANSWER: he was a promising researcher before having met Freud when he was merely a psychiatrist and a physician linked to the artistic and scientific milieu of Budapest.

His pre-analytic writings 1899-1908 (collected by ) undoubtedly anticipates the appearance of the future great Ferenczi both for what concerns the themes he will develop later and for his original way of understanding them.

Which themes? First of all: his ardent interest in the occult forms of communications in the telepathic exchange, seen by him as a dialogue between two unconsciouses or – to say it better – as dialogues (in the plural) of unconsciouses among the individuals, especially between two persons.

Has in this way Ferenczi anticipated Bromberg and his reflection on the dissociation (P.M. Bromberg, 1998/2001)? An interest – this one – which he will share with Freud when they will often go to visit mediums. For both of them this kind of communications was akin to that from mother to baby, and from hypnotist to the hypnotized person.

Secondly: his idea that exists a subjective reality, a reality linked to the subject; thus a reality very important to listen to and to respect, which he differentiated from phantasy and the objective truth.

Thirdly: his assumption that love is an important matter to research and to investigate, even if neglected by sciences. A very important matter to explore because love – in his view – signified always turbulence and catastrophe (it was Ferenczi who introduced the term catastrophe in psychoanalysis, (F. Borgogno, 2001)): that is, a changement of form and structure. So, love was for him inevitably a catastrophic event, a trauma, both in positive and in negative…; an event that requires a long time to be faced and worked-through. This brief paper of him was therefore a clear invitation by Ferenczi to study love much more… and to read before, very attentively, our poets and novelists, our writers (the true experts in this area).

Fourth: the protection and safeguard of “the other”: the protection and defense of homosexuals, who were for him not necessarily ill persons; homosexuals – I remind it – at that time were imprisoned. See in particular on this regard the surprising treatment of Rosa K, a woman who felt herself to be a man, a man imprisoned in a woman body. He asked to Rosa K to write down her life history on the grounds that this was a case where the psychiatrist would probably actually know less about her transvestite condition that she knew herself.

And, concomitantly to this line of study, the protection and safeguard of prostitutes and of crazy people!!

Finally: his general putting into question the medicine and psychiatry of his days and his denunciation of what he saw as aspects of knowledge and power that revealed its practitioners to be inherently conceived and lax in their care for patients and for patients' suffering. In sum, the denunciation of the fact that practitioners could too easily lose

their sensitivity, solidarity and sincere interest in the pain and needs of their patients, which – instead – should have been at the core of their attention and listening, and equally they too easily and rapidly tend to forget and conceal their mistakes and limits under a falsely superior and idealizing stance, founded on a denial of ignorance and of the fallibility of one's own means, while these – the errors, I mean – if accepted and recognized, were for him the privileged heuristic instruments to extend understanding and competence (F. Borgogno, 2012). See on this regard the 1906 Ferenczi's translation of a letter from Dumas to “A Young Person Who Wants to Become a Doctor” and his 1903 review “Where memory sleeps”…

To conclude, if in the pre-analytic writings Ferenczi was a courageous and original “social psychiatrist”… he was also a psychoanalyst ante litteram before having met Freud and psychoanalysis. Above all, he was a psychoanalyst ante litteram in his peculiar interest in affects, in affects expressed by the body and by the skin (!), and in the sexual core of the affects. Affects which – according to him – have to be studied starting from a libidical relationship and within the relational contest in which they appear.

The Early Ferenczi as a Psychoanalyst

Now we pass to Ferenczi as a young psychoanalyst.

His first paper was The effect on women of premature ejaculation in men, dated 1908.

In it Ferenczi, adopting an orientation decidedly intersubjective and not merely intrapsychic, announced both the direction his future work was to take and the values it would have embraced. For this reason I have defined it his “calling card” to the psychoanalytic community (F. Borgogno, 1998).

What is so original in this paper and why is it his “calling card?”

It is original because his spotlight was not on pathology and on the unconscious meaning of this symptom and its symbols (as other psychoanalysts did at that time when they were writing on this same topic). His focus was rather centered on the repercussions of the praecox ejaculation on women: that is, on the partner; in other terms on “the other”… of the dyad.

Defying the conventions of his epoch, Ferenczi stressed in this paper how each person in the couple has his or her own particular needs and idiosyncrasies, which is essential to take in fully account if a rapport

worthy of the name – that is, one that gives mutual pleasure and advantage – is to be created.

If this is not that what happens in a couple, the intercourse, the coupling, will consequently be disturbed and the result of it will be pain, or to say it more explicitly thinking to Ferenczi, an additional pain and a frustration. Pain and frustration not useful for the creative meeting of two persons… The additional pain was generated, according to him, by refusing to recognize the legitimate needs of the partner and not respecting the appropriate timing and rhythm suitable to a good relationship.

Ferenczi in practice with this paper called the attention of the colleagues on “the other” and his/her points of view and specificity, indicating some conditions which are necessary to a relationship in order to be really fecund, fruitful and generative: the search for democratic and synchronic affective relational modality both in the preliminary stages of the encounter and in the mental actions which take place within it; the care of “the other” 's verbal and non-verbal responses to own ways of being, feeling and participating; the setting up of a space for bonding and for thought, the aim of which is to welcome “the other” and to invite him into a dialogue.

For who profoundly knows the whole oeuvre of Ferenczi… one can see in this first paper by him as a psychoanalyst his specificity in psychoanalysis: in other words his ardent and committed struggle to be receptive and not ejaculative… and his perduring effort to avoid and prevent narcissistic exploitative and colonizing tendencies from taking root in his analytical work.

To state it otherwise, we could say that he immediately focused on the principal sin of the psychoanalysts, not only of himself: that is, that of being too precociously ejaculative and not so much respectful of “the other” and of his/her suffering, especially of the child's suffering; that of being too onanistic and exhibitionistic in the interpretative performance… often – in his opinion – a performance of one mind alone and not truly created by the meeting of two minds… Characteristics, all these, which he linked to the narcissism of the analysts, to their omnipotence and omniscience; that is, to a false kind of thinking on their part (for him, praecox premature ejaculation was similar to a cerebral hemorrhage) and to their being in reality phobic towards putting themselves in a full relationship and towards experiencing feelings and affects… The analysts could, in fact, discharge and project those feelings and affects into

“the other”, not being authentically ready to contain and become able to think of them.

Effectively, in his life Ferenczi was a “testimonial” of practicing a kind of psychoanalysis permeated by a deep concern and by an unceasing research of the true thinking of the analytic events.

In synthesis, in his opinion, an analyst had to be able to say a categorical “no” to all those improper ways of feelings, ideologies and mentalities, whether they come from within or from outside the self (and which – I repeat – were in Ferenczi's view active and at work within the analyst himself too), that frequently have origin in objects both past and present, and at times in a remote past (the legacy – for him – of past generations). All these in fact impose themselves on our will and best intentions, through mechanisms of identification (to name a typical form of it investigated by Ferenczi: the identification with the aggressor) which are unconscious and unthinkable, interfering with the process of teasing out and resolving the problems of a person's existence and, of course, the problems that come up in every session of an analysis. A fruitful manner to behave in this direction was for him – to conclude – to carefully screen what it is really at stake in the analytic relationship, looking to the repercussions of the smallest emotional and mental transactions that take place in the analytic dialogue.

Another very important paper of Ferenczi is the one on introjection dated 1909 (S.Ferenczi, 1909c; F. Borgogno, 2011a).

Why did he write it? Very probably, because he started to observe how easily and rapidly a psychic contact might turn into a sort of psychic contagion due to a quality and intensity of contact not adequately handled (“too much” or “too little” contact) and – more than this – because he observed that psychoanalysts at that time had in mind only the projection, considering it as the absolute primum movens of psychic life.

Introducing the relevance of the introjection, Ferenczi connected it with the “passion for transference” typical of neurotic patients. Incidentally, we have to say that he too had from the outset a peculiar passion in the exploration of transference within the analysis and outside the analysis.

Connecting the mechanism of introjection to the “passion for transference”, he highlighted that not only does this passion mark the infantile soul that underlies neurosis, but that it was strictly related to the children's yearning for love and objects and to the vulnerability and permeability resulting from the children's intense attachment to and

bonds with them, starting in this way to understand the libido as object-seeking and not as a drive fulfillment-seeking.

Then he soon arrived to think of the introjection not only in a positive sense, seeing that from the earliest stages of life it is possible to “eat shit” and be poisoned, rather than nurtured, by parents who, in contrast with the dominant socio-cultural (and psychoanalytic) preconceptions of his age, were for him by no means “good by definition”. And – as he noted – if babies are certainly hungry for objects and affects indispensable for their development because of their very young age and their consequent helplessness, they have no choice but to take in everything without being able to select and defend themselves from the effects of what they take into themselves.

And, wondering what the baby puts inside itself, his answer was that it was not only a question of food, attention, affects and words, but also of the actual way they were offered to him. This was exactly the reason why the quality of the response of “the other” was becoming for him paramount in shaping the individuals' ensuing identifications, together with their views and perceptions of themselves and of the world, including those of a potentially pathogenic nature.

With these ideas in mind, in consequence, Ferenczi opened a new chapter of psychoanalysis, which has been for a long time neglected and not really appreciated: in other terms, he placed a new and unusual attention on the aspects of inter-psychic transmission, signaling to his colleagues the weight of what has been more recently defined the “pragmatics of human communications.” Moreover – he precised just then – such a pragmatics of communication, which always plays a significant role in the process of psychic transmission, is particularly relevant when the minds involved in the process are not yet completely formed, as these are much more likely than adult minds to be affected and shaped by the “hypnotic orders” of the caregivers: “maternal” hypnotic orders if they are based on fascination, insinuation and seductiveness; and “paternal” if they are grounded on fear, intimidation and compelling and authoritative… commands.

Both types of orders – Ferenczi added – are inevitably received and introjected by newborn babies, and become operative in their minds without them being aware of hosting such messages in the most intimate part of their selves until they meet someone who, visualizing and putting them into words, eventually loosen their grip.

However, as Ferenczi emphasized at the end of this paper, the problem with unconscious hypnotic orders is that very often not even the person

who imparts them is aware of doing so, nor of what he actually orders, as he in truth could have introjected the same injunctions from his caregivers by identifying both with the orders and with those who convey them.

This predicament also drew his attention to the fact that transference is not solely a form of projection triggered by unconscious phantasy (he believed to this at the beginning), but it is produced unconsciously by the analyst too, who therefore should no longer be considered as merely a “catalytic ferment” of other people's states of mind or, in other words, merely a magnet that simply attracts the idiosyncratic affects of the patient and the significant characters in his life, without influencing the process in any way through his own subjectivity.

Later in the Clinical Diary, I would like to remind, Ferenczi went on this direction as far as to claim that first the analyst induces the transference and then denies having done so, and that – similarly – it is often the analyst who provokes the trauma and its repetition but then he is not willing to acknowledge it.

Before arriving – to close my notes – to consider a third paper of Ferenczi as a young psychoanalyst (equally remarkable as the other two of which I have spoken), titled On transitory symptom constructions during the analysis and dated 1912, I would like at this point to recall and signal some important statements in other papers of his early psychoanalytic writing which show his peculiar psychoanalytic position and the values and directions of his future style of analysing.

They are the following:

“It is not trauma the real pathogenic factor, but the repression of the representations connected to it” (S. Ferenczi, 1908b, p. 18, unfortunately not translated in the English version);

“Neuropathic parents as a result of their pathological condition treat the children wrongly, train them badly, and may expose them to influences than have as a result a subsequent sexual inhibition. […] It may be asserted with confidence that the tactless behaviour of parents, teachers and physicians in this matter, which is so important for the child, causes more mischief than all the other noxious influences of civilization that are so often blamed” (S. Ferenczi, 1908c, pp. 30-32, English translation partly changed on the basis of the Italian translation);

“Faulty education is not only the source of faulty character development, but is also the source of serious illnesses […] it is literally a forcing house for various neuroses [that make the individual] wholly unable to

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find unselfconscious pleasure in the natural joys of life. […] [The antidote to all this] should be an attempt to spare the child's mind the burden of unnecessary repression […]. They [the parents] are unable to remember their own childhood at all or else, if they do remember it, they do so unreliably and indeed self-deceptively […]. The present day custom of leaving children alone during the most violent crises of their sexual development, without support or instructions, explanations or assurance, is cruel […]. The prohibiting and deterring commands on moralizing education based on repression are comparable with the post-hypnotic suggestion of a negative hallucination; for just as with a sufficiently strong command one can render a hypnotized man, when awake, unable to perceive or recognize certain visual, auditory or tactile stimuli, so nowadays is mankind educated to introspective blindness” (S. Ferenczi, 1908d, pp. 280-288);

“We need not be surprised if the children appropriate not only the real or supposed qualities of their parents but also their peculiarities and neurotic symptoms” (S. Ferenczi, 1909a, p. 24, English translation partly changed on the basis of the Italian translation);

And here we have arrived to the last paper that I will consider in these reflections of mine, the one on the Transitory symptom-constructions during the analysis dated 1912, whose core is essentially to have brought to light the analyst as a basic “life's residue” implicated in the patient's intelligent but unconscious response to his communication or non-communication.

In this paper Ferenczi – showing a remarkable ability to tease out from the smallest nuances and subtlest changes in the patient's state of

body and mind, or from the atmosphere of the session, “veiled” verbal and non-verbal signals of criticism or appreciation of the interpretation (or of other elements in the analyst's behaviour) – noted the effect of the analyst's silences and words on “the other” and stressed that the patient's reaction is indicative not purely of the latter's affective particular mode of listening but of the quality of the participation of the analyst as well. Understanding the clinical facts in this way, Ferenczi in substance not only was giving room to “the discourse of the body” when the more desirable verbal route to awareness is not available (thus anticipating, as many have observed, Groddeck and W. Reich), but was doing much more than that because he was understanding the preverbal, verbal and non-verbal responses of the patient to be a secret, hidden and sometimes dissociated comment on the attitudes and mental functioning expressed by the analyst at a given moment in the session and in the analytic relationship prefiguring, for example, the analytic way of working of the later H. Rosenfeld (1987) and, more recently, that of A. Ferro (1992), but in many senses also the “listening to listening” of H. Faimberg (1981).

In short, to end my notes, Ferenczi on one hand suggested that a careful scrutiny of the “here and now” context can help us to learn en miniature (S. Ferenczi, 1912, p. 212) how the patient's suffering originated in the past, illuminating the interpsychic environment where he grew up, the pleasant and unpleasant feelings by which he began to be stimulated at that early age and the resulting defense reactions and intrapsychic conflicts; on the other hand – slowly becoming able to accept to ‘live through’ and be surprised by the ‘other’ that is inside himself no less than inside the patient (F. Borgogno, 2011a) – he came to broach the realm of projective identifications later to be discovered by his student, Melanie Klein (1946), and subsequently explored by W. Bion (an analysand of Klein previously analyzed by Rickman, another of Ferenczi's students and fervent supporters). See for example when, already in this paper, he underlined that patients and children in particular easily conform to what “the other” makes them feel when relating to them (often mimicking and mocking “the other”), and, as a result of this, they make “the other” feel what they are feeling or have felt with them (in other words, they expose the analyst to the same treatment received now and in infancy). In this way Ferenczi was foreshadowing his important future contribution on the relevance of role-reversal in the transference-countertransference dynamics, which I have developed further in my book The Girl Who

Committed Hara-Kiri and Other Historico-Clinical Essays (F. Borgogno, 2011b) and in my last paper on this topic, Role-reversal and the dissociation of the self. actions signaling memories to be recovered: an exploration of a somewhat neglected transference-countertransference process (F. Borgogno, Vigna-Taglianti, 2012).