ABSTRACT
On September 4, 1932, in Wiesbaden, Germany, Ferenczi presented his iconic Confusion of Tongues paper at the 12th International Psychoanalytic Congress. Freud did not want Ferenczi to present this paper because he felt the theory contained in the paper was returning the idea of sexual abuse of children as a psychodynamic in the development of psychological disorder. Not only Freud, but the psychoanalytic community had the same negative reaction to the Confusion of Tongues paper. Freud, Jones, and a group of orthodox followers developed a campaign to prevent Ferenczi’s paper from being published in English in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, which would remove the Confusion of Tongues paper from the English-speaking psychoanalysts. This was Ferenczi’s last paper, which so angered Freud that their relationship was at the breaking point, causing a trauma for the analytic community.
