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Baden-Baden, August, 19251
Dear Professor,
On the occasion of my visit at the Semmering you were so kind as to agree to receive Dr. Severn, an American woman, whom I know as a capable psychologist and who is in analysis with me.2 I am giving her this letter in order to remind you about it.
With kind regards.
Yours sincerely,
S. Ferenczi
No day is given.
Elizabeth Severn (1879-1959) was in analysis with Ferenczi from late summer 1924 until shortly before his death. She had no academic degree, but went by the title of doctor. Ferenczi treated her for four to five hours a day (Ferenczi/Groddeck, Briefwechsel, p. 83), took her along on vacation, and described her case (“R.N.”) in detail in his Clinical Diary (1988). She, in particular, was the impetus for his experiment with “mutual analysis.” Freud later termed Severn “Ferenczi's evil genius” (Jones III, 407). See Christopher Fortune, “The Case of ‘R.N.’: Sándor Ferenczi's Radical Experiment in Psychoanalysis,” in L. Aron and A. Harris, eds., The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi (Hillsdale, N.J., 1993, and “A Difficult Ending: Ferenczi, ‘R.N.,’ and the Experiment in Mutual Analysis,” in A. Haynal and E. Falzeder, eds., One Hundred Years of Psychoanalysis: Contributions to the History of Psychoanalysis (Geneva, 1994).