Contemporary Reading of ‘Regression to Dependence’ in the Language of Ferenczi

Hayuta Gurevich, discussant Deborah Melman, facilitator Paula Mandel

Saturday Apr 17, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Early developmental trauma is imprinted in the psyche as fragmentation and pathological dissociation, which inevitably arouse survival modes of self-holding. Winnicott’s ideas about ‘regression to dependence’ suggest that in analysis regression to dependence on the analyst enables the patient to relinquish the survival self-holding, yet this process revives the early malignant relations with the analyst. Re-reading Winnicott through Ferenczi’s conceptualizations about this topic, and understanding Ferenczi in hindsight through contemporary theories about the intra-psychic impact of early trauma - may help us deal in analysis with the compulsive repetitions of early malignant relations. The focus will be theoretically and clinically on enactments in which the analyst is being the ‘bad object’ in the concrete analytic relationship, and on the need of the patient to work through this repetition in order to enable a development of an ambivalent relation to a ‘good object.’

Early registration: $20 discount through March 31st.

Suggested readings (not required):

4 papers from Ferenczi, S. (1994). Final contributions to the problems and methods of psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge:

The Adaptation of the Family to the child

The unwelcome Child and his Death instinct

The Elasticity of Psycho-analytic Technique

Child Analysis in the Analysis of Adults