Sandor Ferenczi

Hungarian psychoanalyst who was Freud's most creative clinical disciple and the analyst of John Rickman, who analyzed Wilfred Bion — developing mutual analysis, the theory of confusion of tongues between adults and children, and the emphasis on genuine empathic presence as the basis of therapeutic action.

Developed the trauma model that anticipated object relations and relational psychoanalysis — the 'confusion of tongues' between adult sexuality and children's innocent need for tenderness is the source of trauma — and experimented with the analyst's genuine emotional presence as the curative factor, anticipating intersubjectivity by decades.