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The subject matter of identity belongs to the orthodox psychoanalytic movement. For about the last 15 years, the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) has successfully tried to facilitate research and to promote projects. If the resistance of influential analysts against empirical investigation decreases further, >psychoanalytic movement< and its unfavourable concomitants will be a thing of the past. The development to a scientific community will no longer be hampered by controversies over professional identity. – The psychosocial dimension and its normative implications put the concept of identity into question. Instead the author suggests that we speak of a psychoanalytic attitude. This professional self is closely connected to the personal self. It is however, necessary to separate the method from the person. For a long time the genealogy of the training analyst determined the membership in the ever-growing family of psychoanalysts. There have been black sheep right from the beginning. Dissidents, therefore, belong to the history of Psychoanalysis. The official acceptance of pluralism within the IPA invites comparisons between the various schools according to scientific criteria. The methodology of modern psychoanalytic process and outcome research provides principles for writing treatment reports. Group identities in their dogmatic aspects are detrimental for the future of psychoanalysis. The message of the paper is to express the hope that a critical eclecticism might replace psychoanalytic schools.
Following Ferenczi's tradition of examining the dynamics between analyst and analysand, I will explore aspects of this relationship particularly around issues of mutuality versus inequality, all occurring without the conscious involvement of either participant. I propose that these issues of attachment can be further illuminated by examining the underlying neuropsychobiological processes. Case examples will be offered to illustrate these points.
This paper is a continuation of the author's thoughts on Ferenczi as >the mother< and his capacity to identify with women, as expressed in previous work from 1989, 1991, and 1997, and it revisits Hoffer's now widely quoted sobriquet for Ferenczi as >the mother of psychoanalysis<. That phrase makes assumptions about the Freud- Ferenczi relationship which contradict the still widespread view of Ferenczi as someone whose bizarre, acting-out exploitations of patients are best used as a cautionary tale, while his gargantuan creativity goes unrecognized. Freud's defensive ambivalence about Ferenczi created a legacy of mistrust that results in Ferenczi's still being misquoted in the manner deplored by Balint in 1948. This paper takes up some of these issues in the context of examining Ferenczi's unconventionality, particularly with respect to the fluidity of his masculine and feminine identifications. This was not only unusual for the time, but was so different from most of his psychoanalytic colleagues that these differences were viewed as pathology rather than as manifestations of a distinct originality. Contemporary ideas about androgyny are cited as a better descriptive fit of Ferenczi's attributes, and support for such an interpretation is marshalled, even as it is acknowledged that Ferenczi continues to elude categorizing, even on today's terms.