Decoding Ferenczi's clinical diary: biographical notes

THE "METHOD OF GAME": SÁNDOR FERENCZI AND HIS PATIENT DM./CLARA THOMPSON

The aim of this paper is to study the Thompson-Ferenczi therapeutic relationship. Ferenczi paid increasing attention to the way in which patient's early life experiences were reenacted in the transference countertransference matrix. Ferenczi's (1931) description of how he "entered into a game" with a patient, has come to be known as enactment. Ferenczi exchanged the word "game" with "play" when patients enacted their past traumatic experiences in analysis. These enactments uncovered the unconscious "dialogue of the game" (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 130), and Ferenczi described them in his Clinical Diary (1932) in his work with Thompson. Using the language of her analyst in describing enactment, Thompson referred to Ferenczi's Relaxation Method as his "play technique". During these moments of "play" Thompson argues that the analyst cooperates with the patient in allowing him to relive "childish attachments" in the context of the treatment.

On "polygamous analysis"

The close relationships among Ferenczi's analysands at the time the Clinical Diary was written are explored, and their potential influences on their analyses are discussed. It is suggested that the fact that "a virtual group" emerged in this context may have sabotaged to some extent Ferenczi's clinical work, because this setting did not allow the open joint exploration possible in an actual analytic group, and at the same time stood in the way of achieving "a background of safety" fostered by the privacy and confidentiality of a fully individual analysis. Several examples are given of situations that may have made analysands feel betrayed or abandoned by the divided loyalties of their analyst, and may have created painful splits in Ferenczi's own countertransferences.

Thwarting the psychoanalytic detectives: defending the Severn legacy

In 1993, The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi (Aron & Harris) was published. This groundbreaking volume contained the chapter, The Case of "RN": Sandor Ferenczi's Radical Experiment in Psychoanalysis (Fortune, 1993), which told the story of "RN"-Ferenczi's code-name in his Clinical Diary for his critically important patient, Elizabeth Severn. The chapter presented biographical details and original research supporting the rich clinical material revealed in Ferenczi's Clinical Diary. Now, two decades later, RN has continued to affirm her place as one of the most important patients in the history of psychoanalysis. On this twentieth anniversary, just past, of the recognition of her story, I would like to reflect back and recount the beginnings of my "detective" work on the Case of RN, particularly my encounter with Severn's daughter, Margaret.