Reflections on Ferenczi, Analytic Subjectivity, and Analytic Hierarchy

Abstract

For the most part, contemporary psychoanalytic theorizing situates the analyst as a subjective other in the analytic dyad, implicitly reducing the hierarchy seen in earlier conceptions of the psychoanalytic relationship—analyst as objective observer, patient as subjective participant. The seeds of this revolution begins in the 1920s with Ferenczi's recognition that the quality of the two-person analytic relationship usually carries more weight in successful analyses than does insight per se. Albeit in quite different ways, the roots of both interpersonal psychoanalysis and middle school object relations theory can be traced to Ferenczi's emendations of the classical Freudian model.