INTRODUCTION IN THESE PAGES

 

 

Ann-Louise S. Silver

 

I am very pleased to offer these eight papers from among those presented in the beautiful spa town of Baden-Baden last August at the Clinical Sándor Ferenczi Conference, "Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatics: Mind, Body, and the Bridge Between." All but one were plenary presentations. Our meeting commemorated Sándor Ferenczi's friendship and collaboration with Georg Groddeck. Ferenczi, often called "the mother of psychoanalysis," called Groddeck his "brother confessor." Groddeck is lauded as "the father of psychosomatic medicine." All the Ferenczi conferences, prior meetings having been held in New York City, then Budapest, São Paolo, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Turin and London, have succeeded in bringing Ferenczi and his writings the attention they have deserved, but for so long were denied. In my view, Ferenczi originated what is now called "relational psychoanalysis," a branch too often referred to as "new." He strongly influenced Harry Stack Sullivan, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Clara Thompson and their interpersonal school of psychoanalysis, and thus the works of Harold Searles. Through Michael Balint, he profoundly influenced British psychoanalysis's Middle School and Donald Winnicott's work. It is no wonder that Winnicott was excited on discovering Searles's writings; he had found a "cousin."

Groddeck, a Baden-Baden physician, was famous for announcing, "I am a wild analyst," by which he meant that he himself had never been a patient in psychoanalysis. Groddeck gave papers extemporaneously, leading listeners to regard him as a wild presenter as well. He bubbled over with psychoanalytic enthusiasm, and the cherished belief that "mind" and "body" are indivisible. His best-known book was The Book of the It; Freud credited him with introducing the term "id." Other works included The Meaning of Illness, The Unknown Self and The Soulseeker. He believed that organic symptoms have symbolic meanings, with roots in unconscious conflicts.

 

Massage therapy was integral to Groddeck's talking therapy. Picture him walking on Ferenczi's back as he cured Ferenczi of nephritis. Picture Ferenczi coming to Baden-Baden not only for his own treatments, at Groddeck's sanatorium, Villa Marienhöhe at Werderstrasse 14, but coming accompanied by various analytic patients who included Clara Thompson (who for years would head the William Alanson White Institute in New York City), Elizabeth Severn and others. Picture the many symposia Groddeck hosted, with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann assisting him. One of the frequent guests was Karen Horney, who taught at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and then became a world leader in psychoanalysis, based in Chicago and then New York. Groddeck died on the eve of the start of World War II, in June of 1934, frantically dictating a letter to Fromm-Reichmann, which he wanted her to send to Hitler. Groddeck believed he had discovered a technique that would rid Germany of cancer, and he was trying to alert Hitler that his men were being mean to the Jews, and was urging Hitler to do something to stop this. We presume this letter was never sent; it may still exist in Fromm-Reichmann's papers, which are at the US Library of Congress, to be open to scholars beginning around 2030. Ferenczi had died in May of 1933. Thus, neither of our heroes lived to see the World War II horrors, and we, coming to Baden-Baden, touring or even staying in Groddeck's sanatorium (my husband and I stayed in the room with the sleeping balcony where Ferenczi stayed), as we identified with them, could experience a vicarious ignorance of all that their deaths spared them.

The conference setting was bucolic; the weather was cool and sunny throughout. The Kongresshaus is Bauhaus in its architecture, external walls all in glass overlooking an antique street on one side and a park housing a beautiful art museum on the other, the museum then featuring the works of Marc Chagall, the majority coming from Russian and other collections not seen in the US. That Kongresshaus gathering place held a popular and very fancy espresso machine. Many friendships were formed or renewed as participants interacted between sessions. The conference rooms themselves had comfortably upholstered chairs, each with a large desk and a microphone that could be activated when the chair recognized that speaker. The inhibiting factor of having to walk to the front of the room to ask a question or to comment was thus removed, and all the discussions were lively and free-ranging. There were over 60 presentations at this meeting, with only minimal repetition of particular facts, and an impressive complementarity among the papers. Attendance was truly international, with large contingents coming from the United States, Israel, South America; almost all European countries were represented, as were Japan and China. Emanuel Berman brought his teenaged daughter, saying they both needed to come to someplace safe, given the tensions in the Middle East.

I struggled a bit with the sequence of the articles for this issue. All the contributors are pillars of the Ferenczi movement, bringing him from a position of undeserved obscurity to his deeply deserved position as an extremely creative pioneer of psychoanalysis. Some have written books (Berman, Borgogno, Langan and Lothane). One, Stensson, has edited a journal; three (Berman, Borgogno and Szekacs) have organized Ferenczi conferences and all have published relevant papers and taught Ferenczian perspectives. Each has done his/her part in undoing some of the harm resulting from Ernest Jones's three volume The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. So, should I make the first article the "best" or "most important" or most in line with the aim of the meeting? We aimed to celebrate a mutually enriching collaboration of creative psychoanalytic pioneers. I had hoped for, and feel we achieved, an egalitarian meeting. To reflect this within this journal issue, these articles appear in alphabetical order of the authors' last names.

Emanuel Berman, in "Call of the Wild," challenges us and our institutions to shift our focus from guarding against rule violators to fostering a more creative breeze blowing through our offices and classrooms. Opening this window lets in the spirits of Ferenczi, Groddeck and others. We should be exploring rather than staying doggedly on the paved paths. Franco Borgogno, in "Ferenczi and Winnicott" traces commonalities between these two great analysts, and mentions that neither fathered a child. They each took issue with narcissistic mothers; perhaps their patients substituted for their unborn children, and they represented the mothers they had wished had been theirs. Pedro Boschan in his beautiful paper approaches some controversial concepts in psychosomatics. He proposes an intersubjective point of view, which he calls vinculation, linking, as he explores the multiple factors that contribute to psychosomatic vulnerability. Robert Langan's vibrant paper, "Embodiment" illustrates how Groddeck opens us to meeting ourselves in our bodies in our worlds more fully. Empathically, Groddeck and Langan melt the boundaries between health and illness, mind and body, me and you, animate and inanimate, and alive and dead. He amplifies the Buddhist parallels with Groddeck's philosophy of treatment.

Zvi Lothane, in "The power of the spoken word in life," gives us a lyrical overview of the evolution of communication and its centrality in what we call therapy: words spoken and unspoken, depend on the openness of the listener. Jonathan Sklar's "Psychosomatics and Technique" is rich in vivid clinical vignettes that highlight the importance of bringing body memories into consciousness, bringing the unspeakable into consciousness, so that finally patient and analyst can put words to very early trauma. Sklar says, "As Ferenczi eloquently remarked, 'One needs to have lived through an affective experience, to have, so to speak, felt it in one's body, in order to gain conviction.'" Jan Stensson, in "We are the Daily Bread of Each Other," connects Sándor Ferenczi's treatment philosophy with that of the Danish professor of ethics and philosophy of religion, Knud E. Løgstrup. This essay refutes the argument that Ferenczi was pathologically overzealous and replaces it with the argument that to have meaningful analytic communication, one must first have established trust, a priority in Ferenczi's efforts. Finally, Judit Szekács's "Mindless Bodies, Bodiless Minds" brings us into the future, outlining the profound impact that modern communication technologies and medical technologies have had, providing us with disembodied images with whom we communicate, challenging our sense of time and place, self and other. Analysts need to consider the implications of these technological losses of boundaries.

At least one further issue of this journal devoted to papers presented at this conference is planned. The choices of papers to be published, and in which issue, have been made by the journal's editorial board. I am grateful to Giselle Galdi and her staff for giving us the opportunity to present these rich products of a cohesive and stimulating congress, and to Dr. Galdi for her generous efforts, both in time and money. She made a preliminary trip to Baden-Baden, described the Kongresshaus vividly, and located Ralf Schlichter, who served as a really perfect facilitator for this event, held across the ocean and in a country where English is a secondary language. The Alexandra and Martin Symonds Foundation provided us with a grant, also through Dr. Galdi's efforts. Having known both the Symonds through my work as a very active member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, I feel they both would have found this congress to resonate well with their psychoanalytic and general life interests. I also thank the organizing committee, most of whom were presenters at the conference. I especially thank my niece, Erica Schlesinger Wass and her husband Troy Wass for serving as our staff. They brought their professional expertise and unstinting efforts to the mission; their procedural advice throughout the planning process was invaluable. Erica is a lawyer specializing in internet law; she designed and maintained our website, she and Troy managed our database, and then manned the registration table. My husband, Stuart B. Silver, MD helped in very many ways, including calming me down and helping with the design and production of the program. I wish Pedro Boschan, his committee and his family well, as they plan the next Clinical Sándor Ferenczi Conference, to be held in 2009 in Buenos Aires.

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The American Journal of Psychoanalysis (2007) 67, 207–210

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ajp/journal/v67/n3/full/3350024a.html

 

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