Catalogue description Sándor Ferenczi papers

This collection contains the papers of Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933), a Hungarian psychoanalyst and close associate of Sigmund Freud. The collection spans the years from 1820 to about 1981, with the bulk of the material dating from 1899 to 1933.

Many facets of Ferenczi's life and work are represented in the collection, including his early work as a medical doctor; the development of his interest in psychoanalysis; his meeting and friendship with Freud; his efforts to establish psychoanalysis in Hungary; and his own contributions to psychoanalytic theory and technique. Also reflected in the collection is Ferenczi's personal life, including papers related to his parents, Bernát Fränkel and Rosa Eibenschütz; his siblings; his wife Gizella Ferenczi (née Altschule); and his stepdaughters Elma Laurvik (née Pálos) and Magda Ferenczi. In addition to papers directly related to Ferenczi's life and work, many of the papers are related to the actions of Ferenczi's literary executors, principally Michael Balint, to propagate his work and secure his reputation after his death. The collection also reveals details of the impact of the political upheavals of the 20th century in Hungary, in relation to both the psychoanalytic movement and everyday life.

The collection includes correspondence; family papers; photographs; official documents; manuscripts and transcriptions; unpublished drafts; notebooks; and published works. The majority of the papers are photocopies but many are originals, including Ferenczi's 1932 clinical diary.

The original order of the records is unknown. The collection has been arranged into seven series reflecting either the activities to which the records relate or the form of the records.

1. Correspondence between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud

2. Correspondence with colleagues (other than Sigmund Freud)

3. Correspondence between people other than Sándor Ferenczi

4. Professional papers

5. Personal and family papers

6. Photographs

7. Posthumous papers and publications

Ferenczi, Sándor

Gift of Dr Judith Dupont, 29 September 2012

• Ferenczi, Sándor

Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian neurologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and was one of Sigmund Freud's closest collaborators until their eventual estrangement. Born in 1873 in Miskolc, Sándor was the eighth of the twelve children of Bernát Fränkel and his wife Rosa, both Jews of Galician origin. He spent much of his upbringing in his father's bookshop. His father died when he was fifteen years old. After completing his schooling, he studied medicine at Vienna University, receiving his diploma in 1896. After graduating, he spent a year doing his military service before settling in Budapest, where he worked at various hospitals and, in 1900, opened a private practice, while continuing to work as a neurologist and psychiatrist and publishing regularly in Hungarian medical journals.

In 1907, Ferenczi became acquainted with psychoanalysis and met Carl Jung. In 1908, he met Sigmund Freud, with whom he became a close collaborator and friend, and dedicated himself to the psychoanalytic movement. The following year he accompanied Freud and Jung on their trip to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. From 1912 onwards, he was a member of the "secret committee". In 1913 he founded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association and coordinated the establishment of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was intermittently analysed by Freud between 1914 and 1916. During the First World War, he served as a military surgeon, psychiatrist and neurologist in the Hungarian Army, where he used psychoanalysis in the treatment of shell-shocked soldiers, an experience which informed his subsequent ideas on trauma and phylogeny. In 1918, Ferenczi was elected president of the IPA, but was forced to relinquish the position due to the social and political unrest in Hungary. In 1919, after a long and complicated courtship, Ferenczi married Gizella Altschule, becoming the stepfather of her two children, Elma (whom he had also contemplated marrying) and Magda.

Ferenczi's early psychoanalytic papers, including 'Introjection and Transference' (1909) and 'Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality' (1913), marked him out as an innovator in psychoanalytic theory. From around 1919, he began to he began to develop what became known as 'active' technique, according to which the psychoanalyst plays a less passive, more emotive role in the analytic session, initially in order to cultivate transferential dynamics in patients whose treatments were stagnating. These technical innovations and subsequent ones, while initially supported by Freud, were vigorously opposed by the several prominent psychoanalysts who saw them as serious deviations from Freudian psychoanalysis, resulting in a growing rift between Ferenczi and the mainstream psychoanalytic community. Nonetheless, he continued to publish numerous papers: in 1924, with Freud's encouragement, he published 'Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality', in which he introduced the notion of 'bioanalysis'. Also in 1924, Ferenczi and Otto Rank published 'The Development of Psychoanalysis', which was strongly condemned by figures such as Ernest Jones and Karl Abraham, and subsequently by Freud himself. Ferenczi had developed a technique which sought to return to the patient the love that he or she had not received in childhood, leading him to endorse physical contact such as kissing and caressing, and 'mutual analysis' (examples of which he committed to his 1932 clinical diary).

In 1926, Ferenczi travelled to America, where he lectured on psychoanalysis and conducted several analyses. Upon his return in 1927 his relationship with Freud, who increasingly expressed his disapproval of the direction of his psychoanalytic thinking and his interactions with patients, began to break down. In 1932, the year in which Ferenczi delivered his controversial paper on 'The Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child', their friendship ended. Ferenczi died of pernicious anemia the following year.

Principal sources:

Aron, L. and A. Harris. 1993. 'The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi'. Hillsdale, New Jersey and London: The Analytic Press.

Ferenczi, S. 1999. 'Selected Writings'. Borossa, J. (ed). Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Rachman, A. W. 1997. 'Sándor Ferenczi: The Psychotherapist of Tenderness and Passion'. Northvale, New Jersey and London: Jason Aronson Inc.