ABSTRACT
The epic history of the Ferenczi family is typical of that of a particular section of the Budapest intelligentsia. As a student at the Vienna Medical School, he was exposed to influences such as the Darwinism of his teacher, Claus, the physiology of Brücke, the philosophy of Mach, and the sexology of Krafft-Ebing. After his studies in Vienna, Ferenczi settled in Budapest, which subsequently proved fertile soil for psychoanalysis to take root in. It is necessary to point out that Freud and Ferenczi were studying problems that manifestly had to do with relationship and intersubjectivity, of which the pre-psychoanalytic Ferenczi was a master. Ferenczi's interest in sexuality emerged early on, again before he met Freud and immersed himself in his thought. In his paper "A szerelem a tudományban", he notes that "sexual love releases immense psychic energies, whose destructive and constructive operation displays the individual and the species at the apex of their capacity to act".
