“A Dress of Fire”: Reading Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary

Ferenczi's Clinical Diary reveals an exceptional analyst who honestly and bravely documented radical clinical experiences and theoretical insights about the tragic impacts of trauma. The author follows Ferenczi's thinking from his falling out with Freud and his view of the classical psychoanalyst's objectivity and emotional detachment as triggers of the original trauma, through the use of the countertransference to lay bare trauma, eventually issuing in his radical experiment in mutual analysis. The Diary's fate in the history of psychoanalysis reflects that of its thinking on trauma: Beginning with Ferenczi's decades-long silencing and exclusion from the main psychoanalytic community, together with the silencing of actual trauma, this history evolved into the revival and dissemination of Ferenczi's thinking and the reappraisal of the role of actual trauma.

Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Argentina at a Crossroads

The authors provide an overview of the history of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychiatry in Argentina. They describe the evolving practice patterns of psychodynamic psychiatrists in this vibrant South American country, highlighting socio-political influences and challenges.

The Forgotten Obvious: Breathing in Psychoanalysis

This essay traces the role of breathing in the literature and history of psychoanalysis from Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud through Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich. It uncovers interesting discontinuities in the significance granted to breathing as the psychoanalytic tradition develops. These observations of the breath shed new light on major theoretical divisions of psychoanalysis from its founding through its arrival in the US with the émigré analysts. This history offers views both into the changing imagination of the breath itself and into the role of the body in an evolving psychoanalytic practice more generally.