The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi

Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933), a young psychiatrist from Budapest, had studied medicine in Vienna, he had read "The Interpretation of Dreams", and now he was about to meet its author. Ferenczi (1873-1933), 17 years younger than Freud, sent off a note anticipating the pleasure of the older man's acquaintance. Thus began a correspondence destined to flourish over the next 25 years, and which today provides a record of some of the most important insights and developments of psychoanalysis, worked out through the course of a deep and complicated friendship. This volume opens in January 1908 and closes on the eve of World War 1. Letter by letter, "fellowship of life, thoughts, and interests," as Freud came to describe it, unfolds as a passionate exchange of ideas and theories. Ferenczi's contribution to psychoanalysis was, Freud said, "pure gold," and many of the younger man's notions and concepts, proposed in these letters, later made their way into Freud's works on homosexuality, paranoia, trauma, transference, and other topics. To the two men's mutual scientific interests others were soon added, and their correspondence expanded in richness and complexity, as Ferenczi attempted to work out his personal and professional conflicts under the direction of his devoted, and sometimes critical, elder colleague. Here is Ferenczi's love for Elma, his analysis, and and the daughter of his mistress, his anguish over his matrimonial intentions, his soliciting of Freud's help in sorting out this emotional tangle - a situation that would eventually lead to Ferenczi's own analysis with Freud. Here is Freud's unravelling relationship with Jung, documented through a heated discussion of the events leading up to the final break. Amid these weighty matters of heart and mind, among the psychoanalytic theorizing and playful speculation, we also find the lighter stuff of life, the talk of travel plans and antiquities, gossip about friends and family. In their wealth of personal and scientific detail, these letters give us an intimate picture of psychoanalytic theory being made in the midst of an extraordinary friendship.