ABSTRACT
The topic of regression in analytic therapy will always be associated with the name of S. Ferenczi, since he was the first of the psychoanalytic pioneers to understand and experiment with its potential as a therapeutic agent and ally. S. Freud had first experimented with the earliest regressive technique, hypnosis, before he discovered its limitations. The aim of the hypnotherapy had been to achieve emotional abreaction of repressed traumatic experiences that had given rise to hysterical symptoms. Following Ferenczi's death and the rift with Freud, therapeutic regression was held in great disfavour by the analytic community and it was not until the post-war period that interest in it revived. It happened particularly in the UK, as a result of the interest taken in it by Donald Winnicott and Michael Balint, followed later by Margaret Little, Masud Khan, Christopher Bollas, and Harold Stewart, in developing further understanding of this state.
