ABSTRACT
A couple of things could be done by the analytically orientated family doctor himself. Balint brought these ideas to Great Britain, where they fell on fertile ground in the British “Middle Group” and since have influenced present psychoanalytic thinking, particularly in Europe. In the wake of his stay in America, some Americans followed Ferenczi to Europe for analysis, for example, Amsden, but all Clara Thompson. The European immigrants tended sometimes to adhere to a strict and somewhat limited interpretation of psychoanalysis, wanting to rescue its ‘core’ from what they viewed as its being watered down, and striving to establish psychoanalysis as a natural science. Regarding Ferenczi’s impact on psychoanalysis in the United States, his stay there in 1926/27 played a pivotal role. According to Greenberg and Mitchell, Sullivan is “one of the most influential, most ambitiously radical, and most frequently misread figures in the history of psychoanalytic ideas”.
