Ernest Falzeder and Eva Brabant, Eds., with the collaboration of Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, translated by Peter T. Hoffer, with an introduction by Axel Hoffer. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1996. 397 pp. $45.00 (cloth) (Reviewed by Lewis Aron) When in April of 1916 Ferenczi writes to Freud that, as an editor of the Zeitschrift, he is putting off reviewing a particular book because psychoanalysis takes up only a small space in it and he does not feel competent to judge it, Freud instructs Ferenczi concerning book reviews, "A review also doesn't always necessitate a full-fledged immersion into its content" (Letter 605, 124). I have kept Freud's wise advice in mind in reviewing this second of three volumes that constitute this magnificently edited, personally revealing, and historically informative Freud -Ferenczi correspondence. The scope of these letters is enormous, and in a few pages I can only touch on some central matters, hardly a "full-fledged immersion into its content."
Set against the backdrop of World War I, this exchange of letters between Freud and Ferenczi (July 1914 through December 1919) continues to reveal the fascinating, unfolding drama of their intense, loving, and yet conflicted relationship. We hear of the personal circumstances of Freud, Ferenczi, and their family lives, including Freud's worries about his "warrior" children surviving the bloodshed of the First World War, Ferenczi's three brief periods of personal psychoanalysis by Freud, and Ferenczi's "inner theater of war," his persistent, obsessional doubting about his love for and commitment to marry Gizella Pálos.
Professionally, Freud and Ferenczi continually discuss the development of psychoanalytic thought as we witness the unfolding of psychoanalytic history and politics; the business and financing of the psychoanalytic movement; continual writing, editing, and publishing events; and the evolution of psychoanalytic technique, all of these professional matters set against the historical background of the First World War. Indeed, with the ongoing worries, personal dislocations and disconnections, and isolation caused by the war, the Freud-Ferenczi relationship reaches a peak of personal intimacy and mutual reliance.
Today, psychoanalysis is in a state of exciting ferment as the classical metapsychology rooted in (instinctual) drive theory has gradually been pushed aside in favor of more relational and intersubjective approaches. This shift in the theory's center of gravity from a drive to a relational model has come about simultaneously with the explosion in critical Freud studies and the historical reevaluation of the contributions of Freud and his early followers. Within this context, Ferenczi, who had been declared "psychotic" by Ernest Jones 1 and whose contributions had long been neglected by analysts, has been rediscovered, reclaimed, and rehabilitated, and to some he has been set up as a new hero for our psychoanalytic age. In some lights Ferenczi is the prescient innovator of all modern trends, champion of egalitarianism and mutuality, as well as crusader for the recognition of child abuse and trauma. For others, he is the precursor, who sowed fascinating seeds which, despite his personal demise, have flowered and evolved within the main body of psychoanalytic thought. All contemporary psychoanalysts acknowledge, however, that Ferenczi is the originator of relational and intersubjective approaches within psychoanalysis.
Only now, however, with the publication of the full Freud-Ferenczi correspondence as well as with the publication in English of Ferenczi's Clinical Diary 2 are we beginning to