The beginnings of a troubled friendship: Freud and ferenczi 1908-1914

Abstract

Abstract On the basis of their correspondence (vol. I), the emergence of some relational patterns between Freud and Ferenczi is examined with regard to the institutional, scientific and personal levels. Ferenczi's concern for analytic technique was connected with the fact that he took to Freud as a private neurological practitioner. While he promoted psychoanalysis with missionary zeal, he delayed his founding the official Budapest Society. As a member of the “secret” Committee, he played a major part on the literary side of the group's battle against Jung, but he was less successful on the organizational side. The main subjects of the scientific dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi were telepathy and paranoia. As to the former, Freud both encouraged his pupil and warned him against a propensity towards wishful carelessness in testing his ideas. As to the latter, Ferenczi elaborated the thesis of homosexual etiology given to him by Freud. Their collaboration shows that the scientific community of early psychoanalysis functioned considerably in symbiotic terms that were convenient to Freud, but overtaxed his younger friend who was prone to dependency. Personally, Ferenczi was closer to Freud than any other non-Viennese analyst. After their joint voyage to America in 1909, he started a kind of analysis with his master by self-analytic letters. His professed aims were to gain maturity, according to Freud's model, and to achieve complete openness in their relationship. In fact, the endeavour seems to have served his regressive striving for an all-out communion. Freud rejected this purpose which was finally transformed into the wish for formal treatment. In Ferenczi's view, analysis also implied submission to a harsh authority. All this provides some background for his later technical innovations. - Ferenczi testifies a marked overestimation of psychoanalysis, as a road to mental perfection, among its early adherents. It needed a collective process of learning for analysts to restrict their new art to the analytic setting and to detach their private selves from their professional task (witness the Elma episode).