Introduction

The first part of this book was devoted to the development of Ferenczi’s thinking and work, explicating along the way the controversial—indeed, almost heretical—position his late work had, both in his time and in the following decades. In the second part, various authors approached Ferenczi’s contributions from different angles, elaborating ideas that Ferenczi often expressed in only a condensed or tentative fashion—ideas that are now central to so many contemporary psychoanalytic camps. It is, however, impossible to overlook the incongruity between these two sentences: if Ferenczi’s ideas were rejected back then, how have they become so relevant today?