Western Branch Study Group on Early Childhood Development
Sandor Ferenczi’s writings continue to provide the psychoanalytic reader insight into early infant and childhood developmental milestones and challenges. In contrast to Freud’s metapsychological psychosexual theory of development, Ferenczi explored the manner in which environmental trauma impacted psychic development. This series of seminars will delve into his seminal papers on early childhood development and contemporary iterations of clinical ideas he proposed almost a century earlier. The Unwelcome Child paper proposes an object relations theory of a child’s death instinct, while the “wise baby” concept examines precocious childhood development in traumatized children. Stages in the Development of a Sense of Reality speculated on how early thinking processes progress from hallucinatory wish fulfillment to a rudimentary grasp of reality. Child Analysis in the Analysis of Adults proposes that a deep analysis inevitably results in regression to a re-experiencing of early childhood trauma. Ferenczi scholars such as Avello, Martin Cabré, Vida, Borgogno, Vámos, and Kelley-Lainé discuss the usefulness of Ferenczi’s concepts to contemporary psychoanalytic discourse.
This series of seminars will start with didactic discussions of theory in the first half, and delve into clinical case discussions in the second half of 10 three-hour sessions. Ideally, the theoretical discussion will illuminate clinical material presented by clinicians. The clinical discussions are designed to be peer review of clinicians’ work and offer alternate perspectives.
This activity may be considered a non-accredited Group Learning Activity. Readings will be available upon registration.
Photo Credit: Richard M. Markus | Industrial Decomposition | June 2021
Course Outline:
Session 1: Sept 3, 2021
Endre Koritar
-Sandor Ferenczi (1913) Stages in the Development of a Sense of Reality. Pg 212-238
Session 2 – Oct 8, 2021
Elizabeth Wallace
-Sandor Ferenczi (1929) The Unwelcome Child and His Death Instinct. Pg.102-107
-Jose Jimenez Avello (2018) Ferenczi’s concept of the “unwelcome child”. Pg.122-128
Session 3 – Nov 19, 2021
Judy Setton-Markus
-Sandor Ferenczi (1927) The Adaptation of the Family to the Child pg 61-76
-Julianna Vámos (2019) Hello Baby: In the Footprints of Sándor Ferenczi. Welcoming a child into a contemporary family.
Session 4 – Dec 10, 2021
Janet Oakes
-Sandor Ferenczi (1923) The Dream of the Wise Baby
-Sandor Ferenczi (1931) Child Analysis in the Analysis of Adults. Pg.135-142
-Luis Martin Cabré (2018) Ferenczi’s concept of the “wise baby” 129-134
Session 5 – Jan 7, 2022
Richa Sharan
-Judy Vida (1996) The “Wise Baby” Grows Up: Contemporary Relevance of Sandor Ferenczi pg. 266-286
Session 6 – Feb 11, 2022
Darren Thompson
-Paula Heimann (1979/80) About children and children no longer pg.324-343
Session 7 – Mar 11, 2022
James Fabian
-Imre Hermann (1936/1976) Clinging and going-in-serach: a contrasting pair of instincts and their relation to sadism and masochism. Pg. 5-36
-Wolfgang Werner (1996) Hermann’s concept of clinging in light of modern drive theory. Pg. 189-208
Session 8 – Apr 8, 2022
Joanne Hoffman
-Franco Borgogno (2007) The contribution of Ferenczi to child analysis: the trauma and the traumatic: are they thinkable? Pg 171-186
Session 9 – May 13, 2022
Coleen Gold
-Kathleen Kelley-Lainé (1996) Ferenczi’s Mother Tongue pg 160-169
-Kathleen Kelley-Lainé (2016) The Economy of the Totalitarian Mind: The Case of the Immigrant Child pg 376-388
Session 10 – June 10, 2022
Endre Koritar
-Endre Koritar (Manuscript) Death Instinct: A Path Not Taken
