Tag: becoming human

the therapeutic encounter is a mess, so to speak, of sheer humanity…

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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.

Judith Szekacs-Weisz; Tom Keve (2012-01-06). Ferenczi and His World: Rekindling the Spirit of the Budapest School (The History of Psychoanalysis Series) (Kindle Locations 1685-1696). Karnac Books. Kindle Edition. 

(love and understanding) can heal the trauma

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“Being alone leads to splitting. The presence of someone with whom one can share and communicate joy and sorrow (love and understanding) can heal the trauma” (Ferenczi, 1988, p. 200)

Judith Szekacs-Weisz (2012-09-10). Ferenczi for Our Time: Theory and Practice (The History of Psychoanalysis Series) (p. 103). Karnac Books. Kindle Edition.

edin balint on waiting and transference

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Her place in the psychoanalytic firmament is an interesting one. In terms of psychoanalytic genealogy, she descends from Freud via Rickman (and less directly via Winnicott, who was analysed by Strachey), and from Ferenczi and the Hungarian tradition via, again, Rickman, with Balint added in; this background, together with more than a little respect for Klein’s thinking, creates a recipe for a unique position. Enid Balint’s own gifts, already available to her by the age of thirteen, and certainly visible to her schoolteachers, underlie these later influences, which gave rise to her own voice. To end, I would like to quote some of Enid’s own words, as spoken to another analysand, Juliet Mitchell, about her own way of analysing.

The small thing that the patient tells the analyst is probably not in itself what matters, but what matters is not some big thing either. What the small thing leads to may be some other very small thing, perhaps from the past. What often happens in analytic work is that the patient brings something about the neighbour smelling horrible, or something nasty in this particular room this morning; who has been there perhaps. You listen. You don’t say anything then; you don’t make an interpretation which turns it into something important, about the smell of a mother, or whatever. If you do that, you may be neglecting and misunderstanding the patient by understanding too quickly. You have to wait and see what it is about, and perhaps you find it is about a smell when the child was small, or perhaps something quite different. You don’t know to begin with, but if you come in too soon with an interpretation, you might miss a dream, for example, by interrupting the flow of association. In my view it’s much easier if you have an association, then maybe a dream, then more associations; and then you get back to the bad smell at the beginning. But if you come in too soon, you are doing what I am anxious about at the moment, both in general practice but more so, much more so, in analysis, which is that people may hang on to set-piece interpretation. I think we have given up the idea of its being all the Oedipus complex, or all parental neglect, or all anything. We get tiny little important details which really make things alive for the patient, and then, once you do that, the patient tells you something different and unexpected. That is the transference in the true sense.

Judith Szekacs-Weisz (2012-09-10). Ferenczi for Our Time: Theory and Practice (The History of Psychoanalysis Series) (pp. 97-98). Karnac Books. Kindle Edition.

man’s true profession is to become a human being

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I run a sanatorium which is visited by people who do not find help in other places. Sometimes I am lucky with these difficult cases, sometimes not. I am a pupil of Schweninger, who was, perhaps, the greatest doctor of the last century. Following in his footsteps I suddenly found myself, without knowing it, faced with the necessity of evaluating unconscious processes in the treatment of organic diseases. When a few years later I came upon Freud’s works I had to give up the idea that I was a discoverer myself, not without a struggle. For it became apparent that I had first read about these in a notice in the daily paper Rundschau. The only achievement I can claim for myself with some justification is the introduction of a knowledge of the unconscious into the treatment of all patients, and particularly those patients who suffer from organic illnesses, and that I am as aware as Freud that psychoanalysis is a world-wide affair and only partly a medical affair and that its tie-up with medicine is a disaster. I do not have a title, but there are people who love me and I have insights which make my life harmonious in so far as that is possible at all. I cannot send a prospectus of my small clinic — 15 rooms— where I am assisted by my wife, not only in the household. There is no prospectus. My charges are adjusted to the means of my patients, in the treatment I rely on my head and on my hands and on the view that every patient has his or her own illness and that the person who wants to help them has to practice the saying: nil humanum a me alienum esse puto (I believe that nothing human is strange to me) and also on the exhortation: Children, love one another! I have patients of all kinds; I am not a specialist, but a general practitioner with the knowledge and experience gathered in an active professional life. And I may perhaps be allowed to say that I have not forgotten during my life as a doctor that man’s true profession is to become a human being.

Georg Groddeck; Letter to Professor Hans Vaihinger, May 8, 1930, in Der Mensch und sein Es, pp. 125-6.