The Pocket Dictionary of Ferenczi: Essential Concepts of Trauma, Technique and the Psychoanalytic Relationship

Sándor Ferenczi changed psychoanalysis by listening to what technique, authority, and disbelief can do to a vulnerable patient. The Pocket Dictionary of Ferenczi offers a precise, accessible map of one of the field's most daring and self-correcting bodies of work.

Written in clear American English, the book presents 225 alphabetized entries on introjection and transference; omnipotence and the development of the sense of reality; body, symbolism, and Thalassa; active technique and its contraindications; elasticity, tact, empathy, relaxation, and neocatharsis; war neurosis, shock, dissociation, splitting, autotomy, Orpha, and the wise baby; confusion of tongues, tenderness and passion, identification with the aggressor, and the unbelieved child; mutual analysis, countertransference, trust, analyst fallibility, and repair. It also introduces Ferenczi's principal works, the Freud–Ferenczi relationship, the Budapest School, archives, and major lines of influence.

Every entry combines definition, historical or theoretical context, cross-references, and a critical clinical note. The book preserves the radical force of Ferenczi's work while drawing clear contemporary limits: mutuality is not symmetry, elasticity is not boundarylessness, empathy is not certainty, and trauma-informed listening is not suggestive reconstruction. It is Volume 8 of The Pocket Psychoanalysis Library from ABRAFP International Press.