Sándor Ferenczi

Sándor Ferenczi (July 16, 1873 – May 22, 1933) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst.

Born in Miskolc, Hungary, in his works he came to believe that his patients' accounts of sexual abuse as children were truthful, having verified those accounts through other patients in the same family. This, among other reasons, resulted in a break with Sigmund Freud.

Prior to this break he was a member of the inner circle of psychoanalysis and was notable for working with the most difficult of patients and for developing a theory of more active intervention than is usual in psychoanalytic practice. He has found some favor in modern times among the followers of Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, as well as among relational psychoanalysts in the United States. Relational analysts read Ferenczi as anticipating their own clinical emphasis on mutuality (intimacy), intersubjectivity, and the importance of the analyst's countertransference.