Ferenczi and the Independents—Bowlby, Fairbairn, and Winnicott: Towards a third way in British psychoanalysis

Ferenczi’s work on the benefits derived from an empathic or maternal patient-therapist relationship and the centrality of the mother-child relationship, on trauma, splitting of the self, and the reality of child abuse, was particularly influential on the generation of British analysts who came to analytic maturity in the 1940s. In this paper I will discuss the influence of Ferenczi’s work on three prominent Independent analysts of the British Psychoanalytic Society (BPS)—Bowlby, Fairbairn, and Winnicott.