From disavowal and murder to liberty

Am J Psychoanal. 2012 Mar;72(1):33-45. doi: 10.1057/ajp.2011.45.

Abstract

In his (1909) paper, Introjection and Transference, Ferenczi puts forward the murder that, at the end, has to be inevitably repeated with the patient. This idea is particularly pertinent to patients who are victims of transgenerational traumas and their disavowal. The capacity to talk and even to think is paralyzed when a family history is made of emptiness, murder and madness. The case of an interminable analysis allows us to grasp how trauma and its disavowal are reenacted in the transference and in the countertransference. The patient comes to analysis searching for meaning in the face of something that could not be elaborated and remains meaningless. Interpretation and construction open the way to a process of historicization/subjectivation that is essential to access temporalization and to open up a future that might escape the repetition of a disavowed and timeless past.

Publication types

  • Biography
  • Historical Article

MeSH terms

  • Countertransference
  • Denial, Psychological*
  • History, 20th Century
  • Humans
  • Psychoanalysis / history*
  • Psychoanalytic Theory
  • Psychoanalytic Therapy / methods*
  • Transference, Psychology*

Personal name as subject

  • Sándor Ferenczi