Category: Sandor Ferenczi

In his last works, Ferenczi seeks unconventional ways of expression in order to break through the wall of words that had become all too familiar and automatic, with the assumption that “if we only stick to a strictly defined setting, we will automatically further the positive outcome of the therapy”. That is to say that we would be rewarded for the merits of our discipline, by strictly adhering to the rules, tying the analysand to a procrustean bed and stretching or cutting him to fit the bed size. As a matter of fact, the therapeutic encounter is a mess, so to speak, of sheer humanity, where no reliable laws apply, as Ferenczi experienced it for the worst and the best in the cases described in the Clinical Diary, without the paternalism implicit in purism. He is aware of our epistemic fallibility and he does not forget our propensity to err, “the map should never be confused with the territory”, as he writes (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 75). The personality of the analyst, as we have seen in Balint’s humorous sketches, cannot be ignored; the little trifles, the spices, are often more important than strictly following the instructions of the recipe. Ferenczi anticipated this difference, as is mirrored in his texts. For a long time, Ferenczi feared that, if he did not follow Freud’s lines and “recipes”, this would make him a poor analyst. In the early 1930s, however, he underwent a positive change towards more independence. He developed and increasingly trusted his own way of thinking, as is reflected in the Clinical Diary.