Sandor Ferenczi - Ernest Jones: Letters 1911-1933

About the Author(s)

Sándor Ferenczi (7 July 1873 – 22 May 1933) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud whod latter wrote that Ferenczi made “all analysts his students"", a fitting tribute to a towering figure of psychoanalysis. In 1910, at Freud’s suggestion, Ferenczi proposed the founding of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and in 1913 founded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society. In 1916 he underwent a brief personal analysis with Freud, and in 1918 was elected president of the International Psychoanalytic Society.

Ferenczi’s early contributions to psychoanalysis have been so fully assimilated that their origin is often forgotten, although his later writings, which were more speculative and deviated from Freudian orthodoxy, have been less widely accepted. He is acknowledged to have been a gifted therapist. He proposed a number of innovations in technique including at first these centered on the so-called “active” technique, while his later study of reactions of disappointment and mistrust that the child suffers in his relationship with his parents inspired a few of his pupils, notably Alice Balint (1949), to investigate early parent-child relationships.

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Ferenc Eros studied psychology and literature at the ELTE University in Budapest. He is Professor of Social Psychology at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Pécs, where he is director of a doctoral programme in psychoanalytic studies since 1997. The focus of his present research areas include the social and cultural history of psychoanalysis in Central Europe, psychoanalytic theory and its application to social issues, the problem of trauma and cultural memory. He edited the Hungarian translation of the Freud–Ferenczi correspondence and founded Thalassa, the journal of the Sándor Ferenczi Society in Budapest, which he edited from 1990–2010. At present, he edits Imágó Budapest, the journal of the Hungarian Imago Association.

Judit Szekacs-Weisz is a bilingual psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, a member of the British and the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society. Born and educated (mostly) in Budapest, she has absorbed the ideas and way of thinking of Ferenczi, the Balints, Hermann, and Rajka as integral parts of a “professional mother tongue”. She is author of several articles, and co-editor of Lost Childhood and the Language of Exile. Together with Tom Keve she co-edited Ferenczi and His World and Ferenczi for Our Time.

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Ken Robinson is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Newcastle upon Tyne and the Honorary Archivist for the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is a training analyst for trainings in child,adolescent and adult psychotherapy in the North of England and in Scotland. He lectures and teaches in the UK and Europe, and is especially interested in the developmental point of view, the nature of therapeutic action, and the history of psychoanalysis. His most recent publication is a brief history of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

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