“To go crazy with”: Ferenczi’s case and some questions for contemporary psychoanalysis

Abstract

Based on the “Ferenczi case”, as identified in a text by his patient/analyst, Elizabeth Severn, this article presents and discusses three issues of contemporary psychoanalysis: a critique of the emphasis on diagnostic interpretation, especially when it is standardizing, the creation of intersubjective spaces in analysis and their potential dimension and the way that “madness”, once shared, psychically mobilizes and allows relevant content to emerge in both the patient and the analyst. This article further discusses whether the possibility of adopting a non-normative position towards disruptive elements of the other’s psyche could be the result, at least in part, of the analyst’s ability to move between the fragments of his own psyche.