ABSTRACT
Many books have been written on S. Ferenczi but not on his infancy. He seemed to have been a "wise baby", a wise pupil, a joyful student, and a scholarly young man. He was born in the last forty-five years of the Austrian–Magyar Empire. He was educated in an atmosphere of revolutionary ideas. Ferenczi idealised the old independent nation, particularly after the death of his patriotic father. He was already a medical researcher, having published some fifty medical articles when, in the year 1907, the "plague" of analysis spread its bacillus to him and to his friends—writers and poets. In the coffee houses, Ferenczi was used to being bombarded "with questions about the new science, and he, a brilliant and witty man, full of humour and a very good storyteller, talked to them until dawn, so amused by the game". For Ferenczi, the poets' influence was as a forum where he tried out his ideas.
