ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the important question of Sandor Ferenczi's own mother complex, to better isolate the impact of Freud's single thought on Ferenczi. A certain level of misogyny in both Ferenczi and Freud bound the two men together. In Freud, this was rooted in the defensive operations by which he protected an idealized vision of his mother from a split-off bad maternal image. In Freud, this was rooted in the defensive operations by which he protected an idealized vision of his mother from a split-off bad maternal image. But Ferenczi was not at all free from similar problems. In both men these were rooted in pre-oedipal traumas, finding expression in hypochondriac tendencies, psychosomatic disturbances, and recurrent death anxieties. In his Clinical Diary, he reasoned that he had developed symptomatically a "compulsive desire to help anyone who is suffering", particularly when it involved "women".
