Final Contributions To The Problems Methods Of Psycho Analysis

This final volume includes "Confusion of Tongues Between Children and Adults" in which Ferenczi formulates his controversal ideas on childhood sexuality, and the conflict between the languages of tenderness and passion. First published in 1955, this book contains papers written by Ferenczi during his last years and some of his unpublished notes. It demonstrates Ferenczi's combination of great clinical understanding and an almost uncanny insight into unconscious process. Among the forty important items included are papers on the following: "Freud's Influence on Medicine", "Laughter", "Epileptic Fits", "Dirigible Dreams", "Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis", "Paranoia", "The Interpretation of Tunes Which Come into One's Head" and "The Genesis of Jus Primae Noctis".

This systematic and comprehensive volume, written in a lively and clear style, is devoted essentially to the fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique: transference and resistance. The author approaches psychoanalytic technique from a classical theoretical framework, but he frequently gives an entirely fresh view of traditionally accepted procedures. His most important new contribution consists in the clear distinction between the patient's 'real relationship' to the analyst, the 'working alliance', and the transference relationship. His discussion of the contradictory and often conflicting demands which each of these elements makes on the technical skills of the analyst is particularly illuminating. In many fascinating case illustrations, he shows how the analyst carries out therapeutic psychoanalysis while respecting the diversity of psychic constellations in different patients and at different points in their analyses. This book can be recommended - without qualification - to the beginning student because of the thorough clarification and documentation of the basic principles of psychoanalytic technique.

Winner of the 2016 Gradiva Award for Edited Book The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi, first published in 1993 & edited by Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris, was one of the first books to examine Ferenczi’s invaluable contributions to psychoanalysis and his continuing influence on contemporary clinicians and scholars. Building on that pioneering work, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor brings together leading international Ferenczi scholars to report on previously unavailable data about Ferenczi and his professional descendants. Many—including Sigmund Freud himself—considered Sándor Ferenczi to be Freud’s most gifted patient and protégé. For a large part of his career, Ferenczi was almost as well known, influential, and sought after as a psychoanalyst, teacher and lecturer as Freud himself. Later, irreconcilable differences between Freud, his followers and Ferenzi meant that many of his writings were withheld from translation or otherwise stifled, and he was accused of being mentally ill and shunned. In this book, Harris and Kuchuck explore how newly discovered historical and theoretical material has returned Ferenczi to a place of theoretical legitimacy and prominence. His work continues to influence both psychoanalytic theory and practice, and covers many major contemporary psychoanalytic topics such as process, metapsychology, character structure, trauma, sexuality, and social and progressive aspects of psychoanalytic work. Among other historical and scholarly contributions, this book demonstrates the direct link between Ferenczi’s pioneering work and subsequent psychoanalytic innovations. With rich clinical vignettes, newly unearthed historical data, and contemporary theoretical explorations, it will be of great interest and use to clinicians of all theoretical stripes, as well as scholars and historians.

This book makes clear that the problem of seduction and suggestion raises major psychoanalytic, and more generally philosophical problems that are still of great importance for the self-understanding of contemporary humankind.