A conversation with
Peter L. Rudnytsky

Sándor Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn—the patient known as R.N. in the Clinical Diary— is one of the most controversial episodes in the history of psychoanalysis, which has been roundly denounced as a boundary violation by conservative commentators.

In his latest groundbreaking work, Peter L. Rudnytsky provides a definitive scholarly account of this experiment, which constitutes a paradigm for relational psychoanalysis, as Freud’s self-analysis does for classical psychoanalysis. Rudnytsky shows how Ferenczi and Severn co-constructed a way to work psychoanalytically that served both to revive Freud’s disavowed “seduction theory” and to set forth an understanding of the ways developmental trauma gives rise to dissociation, fragmentation, and a need to relive—not merely remember—to heal.

In their conversation with Peter Rudnytsky, Aner Govrin, and  Sharon Ziv-Beiman will reexamine Ferenczi’s theory and treatment of trauma, Severn’s role as a transmitter of Ferenczi’s legacy, and why he believes, with Erich Fromm, that Ferenczi’s example demonstrates how Freud’s attitude does not need to be that of all analysts.