Preface: The Heritage of Ferenczi

Abstract

The “enfant terrible” of psychoanalysis! This was how Sandor Ferenczi
described himself during his presentation to the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society on 3 May 1931, on the occasion of Freud’s 75th birthday. The title
of his paper was “Child Analysis in the Analysis of Adults.” Long misunderstood
and obscured in the official psychoanalytic milieu, Ferenczi’s
work has since been rediscovered and is today justly appreciated for the
depth, creativity, and generativity of his clinical and theoretical intuition.
We have inherited from him a truly authentic analytic spirit, original and
innovative in its particular way of apprehending the transference–counter-
transference dynamic of the psychoanalytic process.