The Sandor Ferenczi Fellowship

Originally founded in 1993, as The Sandor Ferenczi Institute, our purpose has been to acquaint clinicians and scholars with the legacy of Ferenczi's life and work so that there will never again be a period as there was in the recent past when Ferenczi's work was lost to generations of psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and mental health professionals.

To this end, we have sponsored symposia and presentations, developed international conferences, encouraged the publication of papers and books, edited whole issues of journals dedicated to his work, and even consulted on writing a screenplay about his clinical career.

We believe that Ferenczi discovered some essential "truths" about the psychoanalytic relationships and human interaction that aided the evolution of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Among these "truths" were: (1) the importance of the active role for the analyst; (2) the role of empathy in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; (3) the role of childhood trauma in personality development; (4) the prevalence of childhood incest in the development of psychological disorders; (5) the contribution of the analyst's personality to the treatment process; (6) the issues of status, power and control in the analytic relationships; (7) the curative function authenticity in the psychoanalytic situation.

We now wish to broaden our mission to include informing the lay public, analytic candidates, analysands, trauma survivors, and other interested parties of the meaning of Ferenczi's work. We also have had recent appreciations of Ferenczi's ideas to group psychotherapy with adults as well as adolescents.

We believe the internet and our website will afford us the broadest and most meaningful forum from which to keep the message of Ferenczi's life and work alive and available to all. In this regard we will have available, a Ferenczi newsletter, a Ferenczi biography, a listing of publications by and about Ferenczi, a listing of available seminars, a notice about supervisory groups, candidates corner, a listing of international conferences, and a forum for discussion of Ferenczi's theories and methods.

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