Sandor Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn—the patient known as R.N. in the clinical journal— has been roundly denounced as a transgression by conservative commentators and is now one of the most controversial chapters in the history of psychoanalysis. In his latest groundbreaking book, Peter L. Rudnicki provides a comprehensive research account of this experiment, which is a paradigm for referential psychoanalysis, just as Freud’s self-analysis was a paradigm for classical psychoanalysis. Rudnicki shows how Ferenczi and Severn built a shared analytical path through which they revived the “theory of seduction” that Freud had abandoned, while simultaneously developing a conceptualization that would help understand the ways in which early trauma leads to dissociation, fragmentation, and the need to relive—not just remember—in order to heal.

In this conversation, Peter Rudinsky, along with Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman, will re-examine Ferenczi's theory and treatment of trauma, the role of Elisabeth Severn as someone who shared Ferenczi's legacy, and why he believes, like Erich Fromm, that Ferenczi's example illustrates how Freud's approach need not be shared by all analysts.

Peter L. Rudnicki is Professor of English at the University of Florida and Chair of the Department of Academic Affairs and Chair of the Committee on Confidentiality in Treatment of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Editor of the History of Psychoanalysis series for Routledge and co-editor of the Psychoanalytic Horizons series for Bloomsbury, he is also general editor of the forthcoming ten-volume edition of the collected writings of Sandor Ferenczi, under contract to Phoenix Publishing. Rudnicki edited Severn's The Discovery of the Self in the Relational Perspectives series and was the recipient of the Gradiva Prize for Psychoanalysis for his book Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck.

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Link to buy the book:

https://www.routledge.com/Mutual-Analysis-Ferenczi-Severn-and-the-Origins-of-Trauma-Theory/Rudnytsky/p/book/9781032133829

https://www.routledge.com/Mutual-Analysis-Ferenczi-Severn-and-the-Origins-of-Trauma-Theory/Rudnytsky/p/book/9781032133829