ABSTRACT
It is instructive to embark on a "now and then" trip, a journey back and forth between problems of contemporary psychoanalysis and some stimulating ideas from the work of S. Ferenczi. Examining Ferenczi's world and its possible extensions can provide a better understanding of the psychoanalytical process. For Ferenczi, the "entanglement" is based primarily on the difference between "two languages", that of the adult and that of the child, which are not equivalent because they do not convey the same meaning. Before Ferenczi, seduction was usually viewed as a negative phenomenon; however, it has always occurred at the beginning of human life. The personality of the analyst determines some aspects of the psychoanalytic process, and Ferenczi came progressively to a pluralistic view of psychoanalysis, close to artistic creativity. Ferenczi showed that the personality of the analyst does play an important role in the creation of the analytic situation, so that the analyst is never really "neutral" in this sense.
