ABSTRACT
How to give a comprehensive and balanced overview of Ferenczi as a correspondent within the scope of such a short article, even if limiting it to a discussion of the 707 letters he wrote to Freud, fifty-two to Georg Groddeck, 1 thirty-nine to Ernest Jones (Ferenczi & Jones, 2013), and his ninety-three letters to the Committee (in Wittenberger & Tögel, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006)? 2 Those nearly nine hundred letters were written over a quarter century in very different moods, to very different people, in the most various phases of fluctuating relationships, and in different contexts. They treat the most diverse topics, from the most intimate and personal to the mundane, from family to theoretical, business and institutional matters, and so on. They also bear witness to the profound personal and professional development Ferenczi underwent during that period. He was a very complex personality who does not easily fit into all the various pigeonholes into which he has so often been stuck. It is indeed instructive to note that his personality and development have elicited the most diverging, even mutually exclusive, assessments. There is hardly another psychoanalyst about whom opinions have been so divided for a very long time. 3
