Ferenczi's Work on War Neuroses

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the major references to Sandor Ferenczi in Lacan's work and some of the parallels that readers have found between them. Lacan's contemporary rival Granoff did read Ferenczi and made use of his work. Lacan's writings are extremely relevant to this debate, as they constantly explore and reformulate traditional philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas about the nature of subjectivity. Many contemporary analysts in the relational and intersubjective schools who have been influenced by Ferenczi's clinical experience might concur with Lacan's pithy formulation that the unconscious is the voice of the Other. Ferenczi's contributions suggest points of discord with Lacanian principles about intersubjectivity. The therapeutic model presented in The Clinical Diary has the considerable virtue of validating the analyst's participation in a way that could correct the Lacanian position. No doubt his attacks should be assessed in the context of Lacan's equivocal position within the International Psychoanalytic Association and the Paris Society.