Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi: 1908-1914, Vol. 1

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The young psychiatrist from Budapest who had studied medicine in Vienna, and had read "The Interpretation of Dreams," was now to meet its author. Seventeen years Sigmund Freud's junior, Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933) sent off a note anticipating the pleasure of the older man's acquaintance—thus beginning a correspondence that would flourish over the next twenty-five years. Today it provides a living record of some of the most important insights and developments of psychoanalysis, worked out through the course of a deep and complicated friendship. This volume opens in January, 1908, and closes on the eve of World War I. Letter by letter, a 'fellowship of life, thoughts, and interests,' as Freud came to describe it, unfolds here as a passionate exchange of ideas and theories. Ferenczi's contribution to psychoanalysis was, Freud said, 'pure gold,' and many of the younger man's notions and concepts, proposed in these letters, later made their way into Freud's works on homosexuality, paranoia, trauma, transference, and other topics. To the two men's mutual scientific interests others were added, and their correspondence expanded in richness and complexity as Ferenczi attempted to work out his personal and professional conflicts under the direction of his devoted and sometimes critical elder colleague.

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