ABSTRACT
The interpersonal context of trauma, its effects on the psyche, and resolution of its consequences were fundamental problems for Sandor Ferenczi in his psychoanalytical career. The topic of trauma was central in his therapeutic activity, especially in his healing experiments in the last decade of his life. Ferenczi's ability to relax was substantially limited by "terrifyingly rough treatment" by a nurse because of "an incident of anal soiling". Ferenczi's trauma theory goes back to the first stage, that is, the trauma is caused by the environment, but he underlines the protective, trauma-resolving role of the mother, and so anticipates the present-day fifth stage. In Ferenczi's words, the essence of psychotrauma is as follows: great unpleasure, which, because of its sudden appearance, cannot be dealt with. During the decades following Ferenczi's death, therapeutic regression, catharsis accompanied by emotional and somatic symptoms and the aim to enact and abreact the trauma, shifted towards intellectual processing.
