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Jones's Allegation of Ferenczi's Mental Deterioration: a Reassessment

  • In The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Volume III, Ernest Jones explained the third wave of dissension as an effect of the progressive mental deterioration of two members of the Committee, who had governed the psychoanalytic movement: Rank and Ferenczi. While in relation to Rank, Jones made a partial recant, in relation to Ferenczi, he did not modify his assertions. Erich Fromm collected various testimonies by witnesses of Ferenczi's last years, all contrasting Jones's assertions, and challenged Jones's manner of writing his-tory. However, since Fromm was himself a dissident, and his witnesses were pupils, relatives or friends of Ferenczi's, they were discarded as >partisans<. The present study aims at reconsidering the question on the basis of many docu-ments, among which the 1958 report of Lajos Levy (Ferenczi's physician) to Anna Freud. The consulted documents do not support Jones's allegation of Ferenczi's insanity. At the same time, they show that Jones's allegation was not a one-man fabrication, but reflected a shared belief. Finally, the author attempts a reading of the possible function of this belief within the psychoanalytic commu-nity. It is pointed out that Ferenczi's emphasis on the analyst as a real person was incompatible with the strict conception of psychoanalysis, based on the theoretical rejection of the affective factors which was becoming dominant around 1957, and it is argued that the narrative of Ferenczi's >falling into insanity< represented an expression of the fear of remaining embroiled in the patient's affective net.

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Metadaten
Author:Carlo Bonomi
Parent Title (English):International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Oslo (Scandinavian University Press) Vol. 7 (No. 4, December 1998), pp. 201-206.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1998
Release Date:2012/12/13
Format:PDF-file upon request / PDF-Datei auf Anfrage
IdNo:Bonomi_C_1998a
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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