Ferenczi and Beyond: Exile of the Budapest School and Solidarity in the Psychoanalytic Movement During the Nazi Years (The History of Psychoanalysis Series)

This book explores how the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis took shape, and in particular examines the role played in it by Sándor Ferenczi, Freud’s closest friend and associate. It asks what the significance of this intellectual grouping held for the evolution of modern psychoanalysis, and how the defining moments of early twentiethth-century Hungarian and European politics impacted on both psychoanalysis and the analysts themselves. It also explores the importance in these pivotal times of the Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration, an organization formed in 1938 by the American Psychoanalytic Association. This book raises many questions and demonstrates through the emigration of the Budapest psychoanalysts how the threat of destruction can draw people together from across continents. Indeed, American psychoanalysts had set aside considerations of professional achievement and rivalry to assist their peers forced to flee European Nazism. In collaboration with the International Psychoanalytic Association, the Emergency Committee not only rescued lives, but also enriched our intellectual heritage as it salvaged seminal cultural and scholarly resources.