ABSTRACT
Here, Réfabert presents a parable about the birth of psychoanalysis. He tells the story of Freud’s relationship with Ferenczi, his disciple and interlocutor during the period when psychoanalytic theory was being shaped. At his own insistence, Ferenczi also became Freud’s analysand, but a disappointed analysand. Freud refused to understand the hostility Ferenczi expressed in the analysis, attributing it to his “brother complex”. When Freud could not conceive that he might have nurtured negative feelings and fantasies towards his analysand, he displayed an attitude of denial. But when he blamed Ferenczi’s “brother complex”, he set in place a “scientific” prohibition of his analysand’s attempt to explore the analyst’s psychic spheres. He excluded the possibility of the analyst’s transference to the analysand. Ferenczi was asked to act “as if” his analyst was not subjectively involved in the relationship established between them, in the transference.
