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"Who is crazy?  Us or the patient."  With this passage from his Clinical Diary, Sandor Ferenczi  (1873-1933) one of  Freud's original Grand Viziers in psychoanalysis, hooked this psychologist.  His modesty, his self-scrutiny....well gee, just like me. He wonders.  How is he experienced.  What is the patient not telling him.  After all--the ur-rule of psychoanalysis is to talk freely--regardless.  And yet, no one really talks freely.  Certainly not about their analyst.  Freud would see anything they said about the analyst as transference from an ur-authority figure to the analyst.  But Ferenczi--wondered.  Ferenczi tested hypothesis. And this was 90 years ago.   In this entry, he wondered about the sterility of the analytic session.  What was really on the patient's mind.  What wasn't  expressed.  

Ferenczi differentiated his psychoanalysis from Freud's from the beginning.  Ferenczi posed interesting questions even before his relationship from Freud began and continued testing various hypothesis until his death from pernicious anemia in 1933.  

One of Ferenczi's earliest papers, "The effect of premature ejaculation on women," set the stage for his differentiation.  Ferenczi posited that due to premature ejaculation, women experienced a lack of pleasure in intercourse, which resulted in anger toward their lover.  Freud, by contrast, wrote cocaine-fueled love letters to his fiancee, recommending she take cocaine before love-making, lest she lag behind him in his enthusiasm.  Ferenczi, cared about women's experience in interpersonal relatinships; Freud, less so apparently.  

Imagine how revolutionary this was.  Prior to this, who even cared if women had sexual satisfaction.  Women were supposed to be passive receptacles, at best willing to do their "wifely duty."  What about pregnancy?  What about birth-control?   Aside from condoms, there were few ways of preventing unwanted pregnancies (although many myths--even in those days, women believed if they were nursing one infant, they couldn't become pregnant.  Hence, siblings less than a year apart.  The result?  Probably harsh parenting.  After all, how many decades, even then, would a woman want to spend changing nappies?   Let us not forget how disposable diapers became a game changer in toilet training.  

Ferenczi continued to differentiate himself until the end.  At some point after World War I, he questioned the validity of the Oedipal hypothesis, which stated that children claim to be sexually molested by a known adult to cover up their masturbation guilt.  Ferenczi doubted that and believed that their trust in authority figures had indeed been shattered, and such psychic shattering could result in dissociative episodes.  

Ferenczi, in order to further cures, innovated psychoanalysis.  He believed in an "elasticity" of techniques.  The most elastic--mutual analysis.  A double session--first, the traditional session--then, role reversal.  The analysand is the analyst.  The analyst the analysand.   This was Budapest, not New  York.  In 1933, the ethical conventions of the American Psychiatric had yet to be delineated.  

Mutual analysis would probably have failed.  Analysts were not particularly. well-trained--how would they have been helped? 

On this website, surfers will learn about Ferenczi's life, his relationship with Freud,  his controversies, his publications, his sexual partners, and his innovations.  The blog, which is written by Sophie Golden, will talk about taboo techniques current in American psychotherapy.  

ABOUT SOPHIE GOLDEN:    Sophie Golden has earned degrees in psychology and has trained in psychoanalysis.  Her first exposure to Ferenczi was in a citation in Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," when he quotes a patient (probably Dm) who boasted that she "could sit on Papa Ferenczi's lap whenever she wanted to." She didn't know whether to believe it or not, but----it was an intriguing introduction.Golden has earned degrees in psychology and has trained in psychoanalysis.  Her first exposure to Ferenczi was in a citation in Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," when he quotes a patient (probably Dm) who boasted that she "could sit on Papa Ferenczi's lap whenever she wanted to." She didn't know whether to believe it or not, but----it was an intriguing introduction.

And here is Furrenczi: