The ‘Jewish Mother’ of Psychoanalysis

Sándor Ferenczi Image by Wikimedia Commons
One historian wrote: “If, metaphorically, Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis, Sándor Ferenczi was the mother.” If so, then every day is Mother’s Day for the analyst born Sándor Fränkel in northeastern Hungary to Polish Jewish parents in 1873 (the family name was later changed to sound more Hungarian). In January, Karnac Books published “Ferenczi and His World: Rekindling the Spirit of the Budapest School,” and in March, the DVD of David Cronenberg’s Freud-Jung film “A Dangerous Method” in which Ferenczi plays a key role, was released.
“Ferenczi and His World” underlines the irony that Ferenczi’s nurturingly maternal professional approach likely compensated for the absence of such qualities in his own mother Rosa Eibenschütz, whom he once described as “hard and energetic and of whom I am afraid…My mother had eleven living children – I was the eighth of them. Either I was too demanding, or my mother was all too rigorous, but my memories suggest that I surely received too little love and too much strictness from her.” In Hungary there was also too much anti-Semitism, and in 1918 Ferenczi wrote to Sigmund Freud about anti-Jewish riots: “It is a good thing that one has a Jewish and a psychoanalytic ego along with the Hungarian, which remains untouched by these events.” Ferenczi’s “Jewish ego” was strong, as he explained in a 1910 letter to a friend, noting that Judaism “permits total intellectual freedom and freedom of action. The Jews use this freedom to the full, and are more audacious, more unabashed, and more egotistic, primarily in the material, but also in the moral sphere.”
When Ferenczi died prematurely in 1933 of pernicious anemia, it was his moral side, as well as an unexpectedly poetic nature, that friends remembered. The Jewish editor Hugó Veigelsberg eulogized Ferenczi for single-mindedly “catching red-handed everyone he happened to be talking to… He was such a great scientist because he was, deep down, like his mentor Freud, the poetic type.” This led Ferenczi to focus on “little human details which only those experts on human beings, poets, tend to notice.” Author Sándor Márai concurred, in an essay published after Ferenczi’s death:
“[Ferenczi] knew more about human life than any of the soul searchers in Hungary before him. It’s my suspicion that he was a poet. Not that he wrote poems, mind you. But he knew what poets know: to feel out that something inexpressible in words, which is the real secret of a soul, a life.”
Listen to lecture tribute to Ferenczi on Austrian radio here.
Watch the trailer for Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” about Freud, Jung, and Ferenczi here.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.