This final volume includes "Confusion of Tongues Between Children and Adults" in which Ferenczi formulates his controversal ideas on childhood sexuality, and the conflict between the languages of tenderness and passion. First published in 1955, this book contains papers written by Ferenczi during his last years and some of his unpublished notes. It demonstrates Ferenczi's combination of great clinical understanding and an almost uncanny insight into unconscious process. Among the forty important items included are papers on the following: "Freud's Influence on Medicine", "Laughter", "Epileptic Fits", "Dirigible Dreams", "Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis", "Paranoia", "The Interpretation of Tunes Which Come into One's Head" and "The Genesis of Jus Primae Noctis".

Sándor Ferenczi details several of his most notable contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis in this series of essays, including his ideas about dream theory and symbolism. Ferenczi was interested in a range of subjects relevant to mental health. He was an early investigator of developmental psychology in children, observing the age at which they arrived at an conceptual understanding of reality. He recognized that childhood is a time of immensely important development; a poor upbringing is a common factor in mental ill-health later in life. Ferenczi established that trauma and fears of specific objects or phenomena acquired in childhood can persist into maturity. Departing from the Freudian ideas of his time, Ferenczi considered direct experience and discussion with individuals to be important when establishing their state of mind. Rather than simply listening to the patient's thoughts, he would question and occasionally interrupt their responses to gain a deeper insight. Expressing empathy for the patient is also considered important, that the state of mind be clearer to the psychoanalyst who is appreciated for demonstrating genuine interest and care.

Winner of the 2016 Gradiva Award for Edited Book The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi, first published in 1993 & edited by Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris, was one of the first books to examine Ferenczi’s invaluable contributions to psychoanalysis and his continuing influence on contemporary clinicians and scholars. Building on that pioneering work, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor brings together leading international Ferenczi scholars to report on previously unavailable data about Ferenczi and his professional descendants. Many—including Sigmund Freud himself—considered Sándor Ferenczi to be Freud’s most gifted patient and protégé. For a large part of his career, Ferenczi was almost as well known, influential, and sought after as a psychoanalyst, teacher and lecturer as Freud himself. Later, irreconcilable differences between Freud, his followers and Ferenzi meant that many of his writings were withheld from translation or otherwise stifled, and he was accused of being mentally ill and shunned. In this book, Harris and Kuchuck explore how newly discovered historical and theoretical material has returned Ferenczi to a place of theoretical legitimacy and prominence. His work continues to influence both psychoanalytic theory and practice, and covers many major contemporary psychoanalytic topics such as process, metapsychology, character structure, trauma, sexuality, and social and progressive aspects of psychoanalytic work. Among other historical and scholarly contributions, this book demonstrates the direct link between Ferenczi’s pioneering work and subsequent psychoanalytic innovations. With rich clinical vignettes, newly unearthed historical data, and contemporary theoretical explorations, it will be of great interest and use to clinicians of all theoretical stripes, as well as scholars and historians.

This book is an indispensable work for anyone interested in the pioneering psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi. As the supervisor of the recently published correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, Haynal brings to the present volume an elegant scholarship sensitive to Ferenczi's time and intellectual milieu. This is not solely a study in the history of psychoanalysis, in that Haynal sets himself the aim of entering into a 'dialogue' with Ferenzi, 'the founder of all relationship-based psychoanalysis and the explorer of traumatisms, counter transference and other problems present even in contemporary psychoanalysis'. Expressed in a lucid and eloquent style, each chapter explores with an intimate incisiveness, not only Ferenczi's complex and difficult relationship with Freud, but the emergence and elaboration of original ideas anticipatory of subsequent developments within the psychoanalytic movement.