Considering Androgyny: Another Dimension of Ferenczi's Disagreement With Freud

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of the author's thoughts on Ferenczi as ''the mother'' and his capacity to identify with women, as expressed in previous work from 1989, 1991, and 1997, and it revisits Hoffer's now widely quoted sobriquet for Ferenczi as ''the mother of psychoanalysis''. That phrase makes assumptions about the Freud-Ferenczi relationship which contradict the still widespread view of Ferenczi as someone whose bizarre, acting-out exploitations of patients are best used as a cautionary tale, while his gargantuan creativity goes unrecognized. Freud's defensive ambivalence about Ferenczi created a legacy of mistrust that results in Ferenczi's still being misquoted in the manner deplored by Balint in 1948. This paper takes up some of these issues in the context of examining Ferenczi's unconventionality, particularly with respect to the fluidity of his masculine and feminine identifications. This was not only unusual for the time, but was so different from most of his psychoanalytic colleagues that these differences were viewed as pathology rather than as manifestations of a distinct originality. Contemporary ideas about androgyny are cited as a better descriptive fit of Ferenczi's attributes, and support for such an interpretation is marshalled, even as it is acknowledged that Ferenczi continues to elude categorizing, even on today's terms.