ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Ferenczi was nevertheless able to transform Freud's conceptual system, focusing on a few selected points: his reorganization of the fulcrum of psychotherapy; his creation of a new language for trauma; and his mutual analysis with Elisabeth Severn. Encouraged by Freud, Ferenczi introduced a method for these times when analysis stagnated. In contrast, Ferenczi and Rank proposed to transform remembrance into dramatic re-enactment, intellectual literalism into reincarnation. They introduced the notion of the "psychoanalytic situation" and wanted to revive and update the cathartic method, emphasizing that the abreaction of affects and discharge of libido was taking place within a "social" frame. In Freud's own revision, repetition was linked to the force of instincts and considered an "economic" (intra-psychic) factor, whereas both Ferenczi and Rank emphasized the "social" dimension of analytic therapy, that is, the difference between repeating by oneself and repeating in the presence of another person.
